ABSTRACT
As a model of urban proto-industry for the export of luxury products, silk manufacturing was launched during the reign of François I and, by the eighteenth century, had become Lyon’s most important industrial sector. Given its highly feminine workforce and the potential for multiple frauds, the Grande Fabrique (Lyon’s silk industry) offers an excellent opportunity for studying gender and power issues which the black market could and did generate. This chapter starts with a panorama of the Lyonnais silk industry in the eighteenth century (origin of silks, production, market opportunities, distribution of tasks within the workshops), before concentrating on the Grande Fabrique’s female workforce, the various tasks and statuses involved, and debates about weaving by women in the last decades of the Old Regime. Finally, it focuses on the internal supervision of the silk industry and on the main types of fraud linked to work on the looms.
