ABSTRACT
Three examples of inventories surviving in the collection of the marie de Dijon and dating from the end of the fourteenth century serve to remind us of the range of luxury textiles that were possessed by wealthy urban inhabitants in the Later Middle Ages and the variety of uses to which they could be put.1 The first, from 1392 and of the mercer Etienne Marchant, details over a thousand objects destined for sale to customers of Dijon as well as his and his wife’s personal possessions.2 Included among these were several ounces of different coloured silks and robes of cameline.3 The second, from 1395, records the possessions of Regnault Chevalier, tailor to the duke of Burgundy.4 Among his household objects we find several houppelandes of green, black and white satin, a cloth of gold worked with the image of My Lord, and a cushion of silk.5 The third inventory, from 1434 and of Jaquote Martin, bourgeois of Dijon, documents a black and red silk pillow of satin and seven old squares of tapestry.6 The Dijon inventories are part of a much wider corpus of sources from the Later Middle Ages that include references to luxury textiles. References to silks and tapestry have been used to illustrate broader transformations that occurred in later medieval European consumer demand, particularly increased demand
1 Archives départementales de la Côte-d’Or, series B II/356. Hereafter referred to as ADCO.
