Silk Factory Research Articles

The Ponto de Partida Group: Theatre and Music unite Communities in a Restored Silk Factory in Barbacena

Based on concepts from Nogueira and Cruz, Bezelga, and Menezes, this article examines the practices of the theatre group which is based in a former silk factory in Barbacena, helping to make these listed buildings sustainable. After the factory closed government agencies took over the buildings. However, in the 1990s, the buildings were unoccupied until taken over by the Ponto de Partida Group in 1998. To restore the deactivated industrial heritage, the group involved the community of Barbacena in fund-raising and competitions, moving into Pavilion 1 in 2004. After the restoration of Pavilion 2, Bituca Music University was opened there, a tribute to the musician Milton Nascimento. Finally, the group established a community library in Pavilion 3.

İpeğin Kök Boya İle Edirne Kırmızısı Rengine Boyanması

Silk is a natural filament obtained from the Bombyx mori species of silkworm, with a fiber length of up to 3000 meters. During the Ottoman era in Edirne, sericulture and silk trade were important activities. To this end, silk factories, trade centers, and silk weaving schools were established, creating an important source of income for the people of Edirne. Edirne Red is a natural dye obtained from the Rubia Tinctorum L. plant and is part of the Ottoman Empire's heritage. This dye is resistant to sunlight and washing. It has been used in Turkish carpets, as well as in silk and cotton fabrics. The aim of this study is to bring together the importance of Edirne Red and silk in Edirne's history. For this purpose, 100% silk fabrics were dyed using madder (Rubia Tinctorum L.) grown within the borders of Edirne province. The effects of dye ratios and auxiliary chemicals used on color and colorfastness were examined during the dyeing process. The color values of the fabrics were measured numerically in the CIEL*a*b* color space, and the washing and light fastness values of the dyed fabrics were also measured. Additionally, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analyses were performed on both the used madder and the dyed fabric. Based on the obtained data, the closest Edirne Red color was achieved by pre-mordanting fabric before dyeing and using ethanol as the dye solvent. Madder dye, successfully applied to silk fabrics under different conditions, has shown good results in terms of color yield and fastness properties.

The Early Reception of Tash Aw’s Narrative in Malaysia: An Ecocritical Interpretation of Harmony within Dissonance in The Harmony Silk Factory

This article is part of the current ecocritical research that is being conducted on Tash Aw’s works. It attempts to analyse Tash Aw’s first novel The Harmony Silk Factory and investigate how he customizes the concept of harmony and dissonance in relation to human beings from the perspective of the recent and growing theory of ecocriticism. Through examining Aw’s novel, the manipulation of nature in the hope of illustrating the plot of a novel is studied thoroughly. In this article, the ecocritical theory is used to approach the phenomenon of harmony and dissonance in nature in the context of human-nature relationship in the chosen novel. The ecocritical theory assists in revealing with what perspectives the nature is portrayed by Aw in his first novel. The analysis of the novel reveals that there is a coherent harmony in dissonance in the bridge between human beings and their natural setting with the idea that human beings and nature are constantly influencing each other and causing different outcomes from even the slightest change. The implication of the research reveals that the human-nature relationship is indeed something that carries much weight and needs to be given much consideration to. It gives rise to the issue that human beings and nature are inextricably interconnected. By incorporating the Malaysian viewpoint and voice of Tash Aw in the current article, we have exposed how ecocriticism is instrumental in meeting its targeted scope in Malaysian literary context as a multinational area of scholarship.

Writing Chinese Nationals into the History of Nazi Germany

Writing Chinese Nationals into the History of Nazi Germany Kimberly Cheng (bio) In 1944, thirty-eight-year-old Cheng Shu Chi (鄭紹箕) arrived in Germany as a forced laborer from Poland.1 Cheng first left Zhejiang province for Lodz in 1935 to assume a position in his cousin's silk factory. In 1939, he moved to Warsaw, where he earned money as a transportation worker. There, he married Maria Ugorowska in April 1941, converting to Catholicism and adopting the name Stanislaw. Later that same year, Nazi officials deported Cheng and his wife to Saalfeld, Thuringia, to undertake forced labor for the German war effort. Cheng worked as a sawmill worker until the war's end.2 A part of the 1.7 million Polish laborers whom the Nazis forcibly relocated to Germany, Cheng's story raises many questions.3 Did the Nazis categorize Cheng as a forced laborer from Eastern Europe or as Chinese? How did Cheng live day-to-day in Germany? What happened to Cheng's wife, and how did the Nazis regard the married couple? While the historical record does not reveal much else, Cheng's story complicates our notions of who constituted a Polish forced laborer in Germany and prompts us to question whether the Nazis adjusted their racial categories for someone like Cheng. From the 1820s onwards, Chinese nationals consistently journeyed to Germany.4 When Hitler came to power, the June 1933 census counted 827 Chinese within Germany's borders.5 At its height, the Chinese population of the Third Reich reached approximately 1,600 people, made up predominantly of men. Most were diplomats, merchants, ship-hands, traveling circus artists, and study-abroad students, who resided in cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, and Munich.6 The stories of Chinese people in the Third Reich demonstrate the myriad ways that Nazi authorities treated Chinese nationals, exposing the contradictions between Nazi racial imaginings and the actual implementation of racial policy. In the Third Reich, some Chinese did end up in concentration camps. For example, in 1944, the Hamburg Gestapo rounded up 130 Chinese, sending them primarily to Fuhlsbüttel.7 Others, however, survived relatively unscathed. In fact, when a Chinese military mission arrived in Germany in 1946 to evaluate the wartime damages incurred by its nationals, the mission found that some commended how well Germans had treated them.8 Moreover, during the Nazi period, especially before 1938, some Chinese were even able to help those more vulnerable to racial persecution. Chinese [End Page 130] restaurateurs in Berlin served German Jews who were unwelcome in German-run restaurants, and some Chinese men saved German Jewish women from deportation through marriage.9 What accounts for this spectrum of Chinese experiences in Nazi Germany? Although Hitler deemed the Chinese racially unfit, Chinese nationals' foreign citizenship, socio-economic standing, and small numbers led Nazi officials to treat its Chinese population in a varied manner. Before Germany broke relations with China for Japan in 1938, the importance of Germany's China trade sometimes swayed Nazi authorities to override their own racial policies.10 Moreover, the upper-class status and societal connections of some Chinese shielded them from persecution. Lower-class and politically active leftist Chinese bore the brunt of Nazi maltreatment.11 Last, the Chinese population was so small that many Chinese simply slipped through the cracks. Regarding Germany's Chinese population, Nazi authorities at times subordinated their own racial ideology for the sake of foreign relations, the consolidation of power, and the pursuit of more salient threats. The history of Chinese nationals in the Third Reich exposes the chasm that existed between Nazi racial thinking and how Nazi authorities erected their racial state. The curious status of Chinese people reveals the tensions that lay between Nazi racial ideology, racial policy, and the application of law. Furthermore, focusing on Chinese nationals complements existing scholarship on smaller communities of racial minorities in Nazi Germany, such as the Afro-German, Korean, and Arab populations. Although demographically insignificant, the Chinese community of the Third Reich, sheds significant light on the making of race and status in the Nazi Germany. Kimberly Cheng kimberly cheng (kac780@nyu.edu) is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the German Historical Institute...

Chinese silk fine art in early Qing dynasty observations from historical literature

This article analyses in some detail the silk fabrics that appear in a historical literary work of the early Qing dynasty, Dream of the Red Chamber, a famous autobiographical work in which the author describes many of the details of the fabrics based on his own experiences and his family's inextricable links with the imperial silk factories of Jiangnan during the Kangxi period. The text also cross-referenced historical archives to show the exquisite silk fashion at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the pursuit and enjoyment of luxurious silk and imported fabrics by the aristocracy class in the early Qing dynasty, and how this mode affected the lives of ordinary people.

A new approach for an old identity: Soufli, Greece as an open town-museum of silk

Soufli, a small Greek border settlement, presents a widely recognized dipole of tourist destinations, a unique National Park and its silk tradition, including the circle of the relevant economy and its historical-architectural heritage. This prevailing local identity is gradually de-facto structured as a holistic model. Private entrepreneurship plays the first role, other stakeholders being local administration, education, associations and the citizens themselves as active participants. Thus, an open town-museum of silk is formulated, with five complementary museums and collections, two silk factories, an old emblematic factory, in restoration by the Municipality, numerous silk shops, decades of silkworm breeders enterprises, mulberry trees, two public, silk-oriented training foundations, an environmental center, events, International Conferences, workshops and exhibitions by world famous firms, Greek and foreign universities visiting and working on place, in a trans-border and transnational cooperation. In 2021 Soufli was chosen by the World Tourism Organization among the Best Tourism Villages, awarded with a valuable branding, which strengthens its position in the world map of silk.

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

Retrofitting Old Silk Factory in Valmadrera, Italy with Insulated Envelope Solutions.

Building industry is responsible for almost 50% of the world’s total energy demand. It takes more energy to operate buildings than it takes to run the manufacturing or transportation industry. In the drive for climate change, a lot of work is being done by policy makers for making new projects better aligned with environmental and energy conservation goals. It is not enough to only focus on improving the climate response of new construction. Work also needs to be done on improving the energy performance of existing building projects which will in turn, further reduce the CO2 footprint of the building operations industry. One way to reduce the energy consumption of existing buildings, is to add insulation to façade elements during building retrofitting projects. The purpose of this research is to shed light on probable options and benefits for adding insulation to traditional envelopes. This will enhance the operating capacity of buildings without the need for demolition or re-construction. This project demonstrates the energy efficient retrofitting of an old silk factory in the historic city of Valmadrera, Italy to act as a prototype project testing suitable options for adding insulation to existing structural systems. One of the biggest challenges for this type of upgrade is the porous nature of the existing building material and how it conflicts with the hygroscopy of synthetic insulation materials. The research suggests the use of organic insulating materials for the envelope elements. At the same time it also offers valuable suggestions for future explorations. This research has a high impact value globally, due to the vast treasure of historical architecture buildings which need to be preserved, but also need improvement in terms of their technological performance. Furthermore, it holds strong relevance for the Saudi Vision 2030 because preserving local architectural practices, materials and techniques is a significant part of the national motivation to preserve Saudi cultural identity.

Multimodal Narratives for the Presentation of Silk Heritage in the Museum

In this paper, a representation based on digital assets and semantic annotations is established for Traditional Craft instances, in a way that captures their socio-historic context and preserves both their tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage dimensions. These meaningful and documented experiential presentations are delivered to the target audience through narratives that address a range of uses, including personalized storytelling, interactive Augmented Reality (AR), augmented physical artifacts, Mixed Reality (MR) exhibitions, and the Web. The provided engaging cultural experiences have the potential to have an impact on interest growth and tourism, which can support Traditional Craft communities and institutions. A secondary impact is the attraction of new apprentices through training and demonstrations that guarantee long-term preservation. The proposed approach is demonstrated in the context of textile manufacturing as practiced by the community of the Haus der Seidenkultur, a former silk factory that was turned into a museum where the traditional craft of Jacquard weaving is still practiced.

TRANSCENDING TIME AND SPACE: TRAUMA NARRATION IN THE HARMONY SILK FACTORY

Tash Aw is the first renowned Malaysian writer who has brought Malaysian literature to the platform of the world. This paper uses the text, The Harmony Silk Factory(2005), by Tash Aw to investigate the relationships between traumatic memory and temporal-spatial narratives. The text utilises three narrators to tell the story of central silent character Johnny Lim, intermixing with their personal memories. We hypothesises that traumatic memories are correspondent to or characterised with special time and space arrangement of narratives. The article also frames its arguments according to the ideas proposed by Michael Toolan and Cathy Caruth, Toolan’s viewpoints about time and space in discourse and story; Caruth’s views on features of trauma. The frame of argument presupposed that circular temporal-spatial narratives have more similarities to traumatic memories than previously assumed. By analysing Jasper’s and Peter’s telling of Johnny’s experiences, the study strives to deepen the idea of chronotope arrangement being conducive to expression of traumas. The study concludes that traumas determine special arrangement of narratives, especially in the dimension of time and space, in turn, temporal-spatial narratives are to express traumas’ characteristics and even achieve some universal theme in literary works. The implication of the study allows us to view traumatic texts more objectively and deeply.

Factories Against the Clock: Time-discipline and Resistance in the Silk Reeling Factories of Bursa 1850-1915

What can the study of different regimes of time discipline in factories and deviations in their measurement tell us about the relationship between capital, labour and the state authority in the Ottoman Empire? In this article, I will answer this question by analysing the official letters and petitions of the Bursa Silk workers to explore how “watchless” people understand and negotiate new time patterns emerged from mechanized production. I argue that the mechanized factory production did not result in a clock-measured, regular working day up until the early twentieth century in silk factories of Bursa. These irregular labor patterns, however, cannot be explained by the immature scale of the industry or lack of labor rationalization. The answer lies at the heart of the working day: such irregularity enabled employers to increase, to say it in Marxist terms, the absolute surplus value. Furthermore, I will argue that the demand for regimented work hours came not from the capitalists, and it was not the Ottoman government`s top-down reforms. Rather, the demand to curb all-invading, irregular work hours came from the young female laborers who were deemed the least “time-conscious”. In this light, the story of Bursa decenters the male-dominated view in the global history of economy and labour and adds nuance to our understanding of the temporalities of capitalism.

Green synthesis of silk sericin-embedded silver nanoparticles and their antibacterial application against multidrug-resistant pathogens

BackgroundThe green synthesis strategy of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) has become popular due to being environmentally friendly. Stable silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been synthesized by natural products such as starch, soy protein, various extract of leaves, barks, and roots functioning both as reducing and stabilizing agents. Likewise, silk sericin (SS) is a globular protein discarded in the silk factory might be used for NP synthesis. In this research, we focus on the green synthesis and stabilization of AgNPs by SS as well as assessment of their antibacterial activities against some drug-resistant pathogen. ResultsSS was extracted from Bombyx mori silkworm cocoons in an aqueous medium. 17 w/w% of dry sericin powder with respect to the cocoon’s weight was obtained by freeze-drying. Furthermore, AgNPs conjugated to sericin, i.e., SS-capped silver nanoparticles (SS-AgNPs) were synthesized by easy, cost-effective, and environment-friendly methods. The synthesized SS-AgNPs were characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared-attenuated total reflection (FTIR-ATR) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray diffraction measurement. It has been found from the absorbance of UV-visible spectroscopy that a higher percent of SS-AgNPs was obtained at a higher concentration of silver nitrate solution. FTIR-ATR spectra showed that the carboxylate groups obtained from silk sericin act as a reducing agent for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles, while NH2+ and COO− act as a stabilizer of AgNPs. The X-ray diffractogram of SS-AgNPs was quite different from AgNO3 and sericin due to a change in the crystal structure. The diameter of AgNPs was around 20–70 nm observed using TEM. The synthesized SS-AgNPs exhibited strong antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Minimal inhibitory/bactericidal concentrations against E. coli and P. aeruginosa were 20μg/mL. ConclusionsThis study encourages the use of Bombyx mori for the ecofriendly synthesis of SS-AgNPs to control multidrug-resistant microorganisms.

PUSHKIN AND CHINA

The literary heritage of Alexander Pushkin is well known to a wide range of readers. A line in a letter to Count A. Benckendorff, written in January 1830 and in which Pushkin asks permission to let him go to China, attracts attention. The purpose of the article is to try to find out what reasons prompted Pushkin to make such a request. It is essential to understand the age during which the poet lived. The fascination with Chinese culture came to Russia from France, which significantly impacted Russia’s life in the 18th–19th centuries. Chinese goods, the so-called Chinese rarities, began to appear in Russia even during Peter I’s reign, who often gave orders to buy them for the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Exotic things from China were delivered to St. Petersburg by caravans from Beijing through Siberia and the Urals or by sea on ships of the East India Company through Western Europe. Empress Catherine II set the fashion for interiors in the Chinese style: the Chinese Palace (1762–1768) appeared in Oranienbaum; Chinese buildings, the largest complex of buildings in the Chinese style, appeared in Tsarskoe Selo. There, in Tsarskoe Selo, in 1811, Emperor Alexander I established the Imperial Lyceum, in which Alexander Pushkin studied, and where, undoubtedly, the poet’s first encounter with the Middle Kingdom occurred. At this time, Russian periodicals also paid much attention to China. In them, articles about the trade of Europeans in China, about porcelain and silk factories, as well as about the wisdom of Chinese rulers and moral instructions for posterity began to be published. Pushkin read a lot and could not have been unaware of these publications. The acquaintance of Pushkin with monk Father Iakinf (N. Bichurin), an outstanding Russian sinologist, had a significant influence on the poet. Father Iakinf was appointed the Head of the ecclesiastic mission in Beijing in 1807 and lived there until 1821. As the examination of Pushkin’s library shows, the poet had Bichurin’s books about China. Also, he read Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s book The General History of China in the Russian translation known at that time. As the study shows, Pushkin was interested in China and was going to visit it; however, fate had its own plans.

Carnivalesque Memoryscapes of Multiculturalism: History, Memory, Storytelling in Tash Aw’s Harmony Silk Factory

ABSTRACT What is the place of the excluded memories, stories, and narratives in the historical imagination of a nation? This study approaches the multiple temporalities and spatialities that constitute the time-space of history through Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopia. While a chronotopic approach to the past grounds its experience in time and space, the network of chronotopes and their inter-relationships establishes the past as a realm of relationality that is open to engagement. This is especially relevant in multicultural postcolonial societies where official history has emerged as a contested zone with multiple narratives – colonial, nationalist, migrant – all vying with and against each other. Through a close reading of Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory, this study explores the multiplicity of chronotopes that characterize the narratives of a historical event at any point of time and their dialogic relationships with each other. Such multiplicity of narratives, the paper argues, is a hallmark of histories emerging from the postcolonial multicultural nations. The latter part of the paper explores the relationship between history and literature to propose literature as time and space that carnivalizes the monologic drive of history.

Current Situation and Problems of MBR Treatment Process in Dye Wastewater

In most areas in China, the poor quality of printing and dyeing wastewater discharged from dyeing, papermaking and silk factories have caused a series of environment pollution and health problems. So the optimization of the dyeing wastewater effluent process has become imminent. MBR is a new type of wastewater treatment technology in recent years, MBR can efficiently treatment printing and dyeing wastewater. The paper introduces several basic types of MBR treatment process in terms of the working principle, advantages and current situation of treatment in the dye wastewater applications, including AO-MBR Process, Coagulation Sedimentation-Micro electrolysis-MBR Process, MBR-RO Process, MBR Gravity Drain Process, Submerged Membrane Bioreactor (SMBR) Process and Direct Contact Membrane Distillation Process. Through analysis and summary, the MBR treatment process in dye wastewater should focus on solving the problem of removal of the final product. The effective combination of MBR technology and other chemical and physical treatment processes can provide important guiding significance for the future dye wastewater from the end treatment to the control of source pollution.

Ranking of Adaptive Reuse Strategies for Abandoned Industrial Heritage in Vulnerable Contexts: A Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding Approach

In recent years adaptive reuse has proven to be a promising strategy for preserving cultural heritage. When the adaptive reuse approach is used for cultural heritage, the expected outcome is not only the building protection, but the preservation of its historical and heritage significance, and the trade-off between the retention of symbolic values and the adaptation to new alternative (economically profitable) uses becomes of paramount importance. Decisions on the allocation of resources for cultural heritage preservation or development are based on a set of multiple, often conflicting, criteria, as well on the preferences of various, and not always consensual, stakeholders, who attribute different relative importance to market and non-market effects of adaptive reuse proposals. In this context, multiple criteria approaches provide a proper theoretical and methodological framework to address the complexity which characterizes adaptive reuse strategies of cultural heritage. This paper aims to contribute to this strand of literature by proposing a multicriteria decision aiding approach for ranking adaptive reuse strategies of cultural heritage. In detail, we present a novel application of the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) to support the design and implementation of adaptive reuse strategies of abandoned industrial heritage in vulnerable contexts, and evaluate relative tangible and intangible effects. Industrial sites are frequently left to deteriorate, as their preservation is not considered as important as other kinds of heritage structures. Nevertheless, they are characterized by special architectural and technical features as well as by huge spaces suitable to be redeveloped for new uses. The paper focuses on the potential reuse of nine different abandoned buildings located in an industrial valley in the North-West of Italy, with a strong presence of wool and silk factories starting from the 18th century.

Poor government and work organisation in the real albergo dei poveri of palermo

The paper aims to improve understanding of the role played by accounting in its function of governmentpractice, considering the interfacing function of the Real Albergo dei Poveri of Palermo charity. Michel Foucault’sgovernmentality framework is adopted in order to explore the labour organisation within the Real Albergo deiPoveri of Palermo, where a silk manufacturer, the Real Opificio delle Sete (Royal Silk factory), was establishedin 1790 to exploit the workforce hosted in the institution. The paper analyses the accounting system established tomanage the commodified and forced labour of poor female inmates in relation to a central issue—the social controlpromoted by central government. The idea is to demonstrate that work was the means to carry on the social controlof people considered alien and not integrated by the society of the time, while the accounting system was the tool.The study uses documents from Palermo’s State Archive about the foundation and internal organisation of theReal Opificio delle Sete and account books from the institution and silk manufacturer to verify the role of labourand its measurement, highlighting accounting based on the checking and reporting system. Furthermore, the paper,by means of the accounting system, examines the organisation of work and internal management, and the allocationof wealth in the form of healthcare, social security and housing.

The Status of Sericulture in Ghana

Sericulture involves the rearing of silk-producing insects in captivity or collecting their silk cocoons in the field for production offabrics. The majority of the world’s silk is mulberry obtained from the domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori L. (Lepidoptera:Bombycidae). Sericulture was formally introduced into Ghana in 1992 leading to the establishment of the Silk FarmersAssociation, and later a silk factory in 2002 with support from the FAO. This boost led to an increase in raw cocoon production,but is now dwindling due to numerous challenges facing the silk industry. A survey was carried out in the Eastern, BrongAhafo and Northern Regions of Ghana to establish the current status of sericulture. The survey revealed that farmers aremostly engaged in mulberry sericulture with wild silk being minimal, restricted to the rearing of the Eri silkworm, Philosamiaricini (Donovan) (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) on castor oil and cassava leaves. Another important wild silkmoth, Gonometa sp.(Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) was found on Acacia sp. in northern Ghana. Brong-Ahafo region had the highest number ofsilk farmers. Farmers’ participation in sericulture has decreased over the years as a result of many setbacks. The prospectsand challenges confronting the sericulture industry in Ghana are discussed.

GREAT AUNT DOROTHEA MENDELSSOHN; OR, FOAM ON THE WAVE

6 6 Y G R E A T A U N T D O R O T H E A M E N D E L S S O H N ; O R , F O A M O N T H E W A V E L I L Y T U C K On my mother’s side, I am related to the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was born in Dessau, Germany, in 1729. By the age of six, despite many health problems, which included scoliosis, he had learned the entire Bible by heart. By the age of fourteen, besides Yiddish, his first language, he spoke German , Latin, Greek, French, and English. Mostly self-taught, Moses Mendelssohn never went to university, nor did he ever hold an academic position. He supported himself by working in a silk factory. In 1762, he met and fell in love with Fromet Guggenheim, a young girl from Hamburg, who was blond and beautiful. However , when Guggenheim saw Mendelssohn for the first time – she knew him by reputation only – and saw his stunted misshapen figure, she began to weep. ‘‘Is it because of my hump?’’ Mendelssohn asked her. ‘‘Yes,’’ Guggenheim admitted tearfully. ‘‘Let me tell you a story,’’ he said. ‘‘According to a Talmudic saying, a proclamation of the name of the person I will marry was made in heaven when I was born. Not only was my future wife named, but it was also said that she would be hunchbacked. ‘Oh, no,’ I said to myself, ‘she will be deformed, bitter and unhappy. 6 7 R Dear Lord,’ I said again, ‘give me the hump instead and make her fair and beautiful.’’’ Fromet Guggenheim was so moved by his story that she dried her tears and they married. The two lived together happily and had ten children, six of whom survived to adulthood. They were Dorothea (originally called Brendel), Rebecka, Joseph, Henriette, Abraham, and Nathan; the four who did not survive were Sara, Sisa, Hayyim, and Mendel. Moses wrote movingly about one of the latter to a friend: ‘‘Death has knocked at my door and robbed me of a child, which had lived but eleven innocent months; but God be praised, her short life was happy and full of bright promise’’ – a short life he goes on to describe. He ends his letter with: ‘‘You will laugh at my simplicity, and see in this talk the weakness of a man who, seeking comfort, finds it nowhere but in his own imagination. It may be; I cannot believe that God has set us on His earth like foam on the wave.’’ My father’s family was also German and Jewish, but when I was born in 1938 in France, I was baptized a Lutheran in a beautiful long white lace gown which had belonged to my father, a fact that leads me to believe that he also had been baptized. Neither of my parents, however, was religious. I never heard them mention God, nor did I ever see them inside a church – except to sightsee. I, on the other hand, as a child was fanatically religious. I am not sure why – perhaps, because we lived in Peru, a Catholic country, and perhaps, too, because my French nanny, who was truly devout, took me to mass on Sundays. I distinctly remember that every night I knelt on the floor beside my bed and said the Lord’s Prayer in French, ‘‘Notre Père qui es aux cieux,’’ and how I added a long list of the names of family members, friends, pets, and stu√ed animals to be blessed. On my night table, I had a small marble statue of the baby Jesus. The statue rested on a bed of white cotton, and each night I kissed it. No one, I decreed, was allowed to touch it. One day, however, the Peruvian maid, cleaning my room, did touch it; worse, she dropped the statue of the baby Jesus on the floor and his foot broke o√. How to convey my outrage, my fury, at this sacrilege: I bit the maid’s hand so hard I drew blood. Of the six Mendelssohn children, only Rebecka...

Accounting in hybrid forms of capitalist/socialist enterprises: A multiple interpretative approach to the Royal Factory of Silk of San Leucio, 1802–1826

The aim of this article is to describe the role played by accounting in an industrial company in which elements of utopian socialism and capitalism co-existed. The case is the Royal Silk Factory founded by King Ferdinand IV at San Leucio, near Caserta in 1778. The article covers the years 1802–1826. In this hybrid institution, double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) was adopted to calculate the minimum profit rate owed to the capitalist shareholders, while ‘labour accounting’ measured the workers’ performance. The surplus value was shared between the enterprise and the workers. This article makes a number of contributions to the accounting history literature: First, it adds archival evidence of accounting practices in Italian industrial companies; second, it supports the close connection between DEB and capitalism; third, it shows that the accounting system is set up to reflect the different social organisation of a manufacturing company; and finally, it illustrates how the accounting system makes the wealth-generating and wealth-distributing processes accountable.