Trust, diversity and quality in the Antwerp tapestry production and trade (1660-1720). An inclusive approach to the social and entrepreneurial strategies of 'coopman-tapissiers' via art historical research and data visualisation and analysis.

This doctoral dissertation takes an inclusive look at the Antwerp tapestry industry (1660-1720) through art historical research, data visualisation and data analysis. The study forms part of the research project MapTap (Research Foundation-Flanders/KU Leuven, 2013-2016) ‘Mapping the Antwerp-Brussels-Oudenarde tapestry complex (1600-1700) via network analysis’ (www.maptap.be) and is supervised by Prof Dr Koenraad Brosens (Art History/KU Leuven).

                Until recently a lack of information on the social structure of the Antwerp tapestry industry made it difficult or even impossible to attribute Antwerp tapestries to producers and/or painters and consequently also to date them approximately. Recent studies showed that network formation in the Flemish early modern tapestry industry was vital. Unfortunately, a study of the Antwerp tapestry production was never realised. This doctoral dissertation is the first of its kind to research the Antwerp tapestry industry (1660-1720) systematically through six chapters.

                The first chapter offers an extensive status quaestionis that demonstrates in a clear manner that important archival sources on the Antwerp tapestry industry were already being published in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, these archival sources were not picked up immediately. (Art)historians that would do this later on, contributed to a fragmented history which was based solemnly on published sources. Both published sources, new archival data and (images of) tapestries form the basic principle of this doctoral dissertation.

                Chapter two shows that there was no clear-cut method at the start of this research to visualise and analyse early modern relational data present in a very diverse and wide group of archive files. The field of historical social network analysis is a fairly new and undiscovered research area and is therefore still in the making. Often ideas will be elaborated in theory but they do not get outlined in practice. It is precisely based on this practice that MapTap developed the foundations for a formal art historical social network analysis. Cornelia, the database developed by the research team, plays a key role in this process. The database enables the analysis of archival data, the creation of easy-reference overviews and the export to software for data visualisation and data analysis such as Gephi and Tableau. In function of this research, Cornelia was fed relational and attributional data on the Antwerp tapestry industry. The database formed a means - not an aim in itself - to analyse, visualise, interpret and establish easy-reference overviews of the links in the Antwerp tapestry industry.

                Chapter three focuses on the institutional context concerning the organisation of the Antwerp tapestry industry. This chapter demonstrates that the tapestry industry was originally organised according to traditional methods. However, in the sixteenth century, this structure had already lost importance. The formation of the Tapissierspand around 1550 cleared the way for vertically integrated coopman-tapissiers or tapestry entrepreneurs who controlled the production and (European) distribution of their merchandise completely autonomously. The lack of a central organisational structure for the Antwerp tapestry industry is an exceedingly important finding. Seeing as, when an institutional guideline is missing, trust between the entrepreneurs gains all the more importance. In addition, it impacts the methodology of the research. Whenever you want to identify actors from the Antwerp tapestry industry and want to determine if and to what extent they were interconnected, you need to look, out of sheer necessity, at a series of diverse archival sources.

                Chapter four identifies three groups of actors via different types of archival sources: suppliers (buyers/sellers of wool and silk, and painters), producers (coopman-tapissiers and weavers) and traders. Each group contributed to the production and/or trade of tapestries. This chapter demonstrates the importance of quality and diversity in the process. In addition, the social background of the actors and places where they lived and worked are also identified. Between 1660 and 1720, at least 37 tapestry entrepreneurs were active. Various wives of these entrepreneurs were also actively involved in doing business.

                Chapter five focuses on the connections based on trust between the 37 Antwerp tapestry entrepreneurs. Parish records on the marriage, baptism and funeral of these entrepreneurs form the basis of the research into social connections. The professional connections were investigated through a diverse, but more limited framework of sources. A number of key tapestry entrepreneurs were members of the Antwerp mercers (meerseniers) and thus obtained easy access to the small, but important group of wool and silk distributors. Entrepreneurs who were devotees of the chamber of rhetoric De Violieren were able to connect with painters and art merchants more easily. Furthermore, collaborations were studied between on the one hand a number of key Antwerp entrepreneurs and on the other hand between some Antwerp entrepreneurs and Brussels tapissiers via cooperation and employment contracts and through a couple of significant roles in Cornelia. Chapter five portrays the importance of Antwerp in the production and merchandise network of Brussels and Oudenarde. In addition, interrelations also existed between the Antwerp entrepreneurs themselves. This last finding was only recently discovered. Various producers established strong networks. A reconstruction of these networks is vital in order to be able to match the still existing tapestries with their production background.

                Chapter six contains an overview of tapestries that were produced in Antwerp with absolute certainty. These Antwerp tapestry series can be situated and placed in their production context thanks to the identification of the tapestry entrepreneurs and painters revealed in chapter four and the cooperation networks in chapter five. Specific tapestries situated in museums, the art market and private collections can thus be attributed to producers and painters and can be dated approximately. It is clear that a large diversification in production existed in Antwerp, both in terms of the effect it had on the most diverse iconographic subjects as well as on the quality of the Antwerp series.