Moulding clay, making gold. Credit, labour and demand in ceramic businesses in late medieval Barcelona

Abstract

This article explores a group of ceramic businesses established in the city of Barcelona in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The main source analysed is an extraordinary book of debts, belonging to the plate maker (escudeller) Nicolau Reiner, known among historians as the Llibre de les fornades (Book of Batches). A comprehensive study of its 1,069 accounting entries makes it possible to shed light on the recourse to informal credit among the professionals in the sector, the work in the workshops, and the commercialisation of the items manufactured. The article argues that the acquisition of loans and the hierarchisation of small family businesses through indebtedness were fundamental resources for the ceramic industry of the time, in order to meet the growing demand for consumer goods in this material.