The blurb on the fly leaf says: Located just ten miles from Florence and completely integrated into that city’s economy, the small fourteenth-century Italian town of Prato lived mostly in the shadow of its larger neighbor. Its merchants and small businessmen and –women would be forgotten today but for the survival of an unusual number of documents from Prato ___detailed account books that preserve line-by-line records of business transactions. In no other Italian town___not even Florence__ did account books survive in such quantity. Mining this unique resource, Richard K. Marshall throws new light on the everyday business life of Renaissance Italy.

            Marshall begins with a look at the local marketplace in Prato, examining the way of life in this small town, explaining how business was conducted, and offering an in-depth look at the particular cases of an independent broker and a family of innkeepers. He then turns to common business practices, paying special attention to methods of bookkeeping, credit, loans, and banking in the local economy.

Contents:

Forward
Acknowledgements
Dates, weights and measure, and money 

The Local Marketplace
            Way of life
            The conduct of business
            An independent broker and a family of innkeepers  

Business Practices
            Bookkeeping
            A world of credit and trust
            Loans
            Banking and the local economy 

Conclusion
Appendix: list of account books
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Rural Pennsylvania Clothing
By Ellen J. Gehret
$95.50 plus 6% tax in PA 

Being a study of the wearing apparel of the German and English inhabitants, both Men and Women, who resided in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Also including sewing instructions and patterns which are profusely illustrated! 

This 309 page soft cover book is a respected reference book in costuming and re-enacting. This is the second printing, 1990, of the1976 edition. Now out of print. 

(1 in stock)

Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1600
By Dennis Romano
$51.00 plus 6% tax in PA 

            Unlike most 20^th c households, those of late medieval and early modern European society included many individuals not related by blood or marriage. Prominent among these were domestic servants, members of the lower classes whose duties ranged from managing the household to raising the children. Within the confines of the household, the powerful and the powerless came together in complex and meaningful ways.
            In [this book] historian Dennis Romano examines the realities and significance of domestic service in what was arguably the most important city in 15^th and 16^th century Europe__ Venice. Drawing on a variety of materials, including humanist treatises on household management, books of costumes, civic statues, census data, contracts, wills, and court records, Romano paints a vivid picture of the conditions of domestic labor, the difficult lives of servants, the worries and concerns of masters, and the ambivalent ways in which masters and servants interacted. He also shows how servants __ especially gondoliers__ came to be seen more and more as symbols of their masters’ status. 

Contents: 

List of plates and tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction 

Part 1  Norms
            Treatises on Household Management and Service
                        By Paolino, Fiovanni Caldiera, Giacomo Lanteri, Agostino Valier;                         And: an encyclopedia, a book of fashion, an oration, and a treatise on death. 

            The Venetian Government and the Regulation of Domestic Service
                        Includes:  registration of servants, capi di sestieri and the Capitulary of 1503,                           transfer of authority to the censori and the Capitulary of 1541. later-16^th c                          legislation concerning servants, censors as judges

Part 2  Structures
            Servants in the Venetian Household
                        Includes: Ducal household, Patrician household, cittadino household, artisan                          household, servant census data, records
            Recruitment, Contracts, and Wages: mechanics of labor
            Lives of Servants 

Part 3   Practice
            Dynamics of Master-Servant Relations
            Significance of Service 

Appendix A and B
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Plates and Tables throughout.