Paula Hohti: Principal Investigator 4

Research Interests:

Early Modern European dress, Renaissance material culture, Consumer and labour history, History of art and design

Research Profile:

Paula Hohti has extensive experience in material culture studies and is currently working on the dress of artisan workers in both Italy and Scandinavia. Her research project “The Dress of an Artisan: Clothing, Identity and Fashion in Early Modern Europe” explores what kinds of fashion innovations were circulated among the lower middling classes of artisans, shopkeepers and traders such as barbers, bakers and tailors in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Drawing on a range of archival documents such as household inventories, account books, notarial contracts and criminal records, it investigates how the design and quality of garments changed across time and space, what mechanisms were used to transmit ideas about fashion, and what meanings families of a lower social rank associated with dress, appearance, and dressing, especially during public occasions such as weddings.

Selected Publications:

The Italian Renaissance of Artisans and Shopkeepers: Culture and Experience in Sixteenth-Century Siena (forthcoming 2012).

Hohti, P. (ed.), Beyond Boundaries: One hundred Years of Finnish Design (Avain, forthcoming 2011)

Hohti, P., Locating Artisan Communitites: Domestic Space and Identity in sixteenth-Century Siena, Special issue of Urban Studies, edited by Fabrizio Nevola and Guido Rebecchini (forthcoming 2010).

Hohti, P., Conspicuous Consumption and Social Status in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Renaissance Studies, vol. 24, no. 5, 2010, 654-670.

Hohti, P., Artisans, Pawn-broking and the Circulation of Material Goods in Sixteenth-Century Siena, in M. Ascheri, G. Mazzini, F. Nevola (eds.), Siena nel Rinascimento: L’ultimo secolo della Repubblica, II: Arte, architettura, cultura. Acts of the Conference held in Siena 28-30 September 2003 and 16-18 September 2004 (Siena, 2009), 271-81.

Hohti, P., The Innkeeper’s Goods: The Use and Acquisition of Household Property in Sixteenth-Century Siena, in M. O’Malley and E. Welch (eds.), The Material Renaissance, 1450-1600 (Manchester University Press, 2007), 242-259.

Hohti, P., Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy: Identities, Families and Masculinities by Sandra Cavallo, Gender and History, vol. 21, no. 1, 2009, 202-3. (book review)

Hohti, P., Renaissance Siena: Art for a City, Renaissance Studies, Vol 22, issue 5, 2008, 729-734. (exhibition review)