BETTONI Barbara

  Barbara Bettoni. is associate professor of Economic History at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Brescia (since 2007). She got her degree in law in 1999 with a thesis in Economic History about the Venetian production of glass beads during XVIII century (Tutor: Marco Belfanti). Then, in 2003, she got a PhD in Economic and Social History at the Bocconi University in Milan, defending a thesis about consumer models and life style in Brescia between XVII and XIX centuries, tutored by Marco Belfanti, Marzio Romani and Gerard Labrot.
 Her research interests focuse on material culture and consumer models in Early Modern Italy. Her more recent works and studies conceive the history of fashion and technology with a particular research interests on the history of Italian production of buttons in a long time perspective, from Renaissance up to XXth century, from buttons as jewels to mass production items.
 She is author of three books, Perle di vetro e gioie false. Produzioni e cultura del gioiello non prezioso nell'Italia moderna (Venezia, Marsilio Editori, 2017); Da gioielli ad accessori alla moda. Tradizione e innovazione nella manifattura del bottone in Italia dal tardo Medioevo a oggi (Venezia, Marsilio editori, 2013), and I beni dell’agiatezza. Stili di vita nelle famiglie bresciane dell’età moderna (Milano, Franco Angeli, 2005), on material culture, life style, and consumer models in Brescia and Eastern Lombardy in the Early Modern Age. Some recent publications are: B. Bettoni, Fashion, tradition, and innovation in button manufacturing in Early Modern Italy ( Technology and culture, vol. 55, July 2014, pp. 675-710) and B. Bettoni, Usefulness, Ornamental Function, and Novelty: Debates on Quality in Button and Buckle Manufacturing in Northern Italy (Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries), in Bert De Munck, Dries Lyna eds., Concepts of Value in European Material Culture, 1500-1900, (Farnham, Ashgate, 2015, pp. 171-206).