Textile Circulation in the Dutch Global Market: A Digital Approach

Abstract

From the refined silk used to make japonse rokken to the coarse cotton of laborers’ shirts, textiles have long been critical indicators of rank and status in the visual culture of the early modern Dutch Republic and its global networks. And yet, due to the complexity of the trade, the ways in which these textiles generated meaning is not easy to discern. With these concerns in mind, this essay debuts the preliminary findings of the Dutch Textile Trade Project (dutchtextiletrade.org), an ongoing, collaborative digital art history project that brings together four types of data (textual, material, visual, and quantitative) in an effort to advance the study of historic trade textiles and their social meanings.