[SLANY/KLADNO.]

£4,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Beautifully bound Czech ms. a rare and remarkable witness to the world of provincial guilds in early modern Europe. It is a working ledger, for quick note taking and reckoning, used by the Company of Bakers, Millers and Gingerbread Makers of Slany (or Kladno), a few miles north-west of Prague. It features over one hundred leaves of notes, in several hands, concerning payments to the guild by its members, spanning two centuries. Half of the ms. text was written in the C17. This ms. provides a fascinating picture of the small community of bakers and millers who operated in Kladno. Whilst Prague had over 100 bakers in the early C17, it is reasonable to think a small town like Slany did not have more than 10 (Jan√° ek, Dejiny obchodu ). Bakers and millers were, historically, connected professions; in smaller cities, as here, they could share the same corporation or confraternity (Patkova, Bratrstvie , 122). Bakers could employ their own millers to grind flour which could only be used for making bread and not for sale as such (Winter, Remeslnictvo , 643-44). The baker Adam Sobotka, and the millers Jan Oliwa, the Jira_eks, Jan and Waclaw Kozak and the Cynt family are among those mentioned in the first half of the C17. Their names appear with others at the bottom of several annotations, as they were, in turn, part of the company s council, renewed every year (Lacina, Pameti , 60). Their businesses were interconnected. For instance, we know that Adam Sobotka and his wife Dorota bo

• Binding: Hardcover

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