Old and New Ceramics: manufacturers, products and markets in the Venetian Republic in the 17th and 18th centuries

How did manufacturers cope with innovation in the mercantilist age? In most sectors, innovation itself was conceived mainly as product innovation, even when new production processes were involved. In this perspective, also the discussed complementarity between mercantilist import-substituting imitation, and process and product innovation becomes clearer. The case of ceramics production in the Venetian Republic is particularly interesting, showing clearly that import substitution was the main drive of change in a manufacture which never attained in Venice the strategic importance of glass, silk and wool. Art historians have reconstructed a history of ceramics production sites at a local level, providing a detailed description of product typologies, useful to study their evolution, origin and diffusion. These studies show clearly that the decay of urban ceramic guilds in the second half of 17th century pushed political authorities to grant privileges to private manufacturers producing fine majolica, then porcelain and in the late 18th century earthenware, both in Venice and in some centres of its mainland. These studies indicate also a series of sources (pleas, privilege patents, trials, notarial acts, and the pieces preserved in museums and private collections), which are used here for an historical analysis of the institutional and informal devices allowing local production to adapt to European market trends and innovations. The logic of privilege allowance emerging from this analysis shows the political authorities of the Republic struggling to find a mechanism allowing private manufacturers to develop durable technical expertise in order to face the continuous waves of innovation in European ceramics typologies and production. Temporary monopolies, fiscal exemptions and restrictions to workforce mobility were the main institutional tools used to build up an industrial policy which could cope with product innovation as apprenticeship and cooptation did in the guild framework.