Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650

In this volume, the author investigates the artisan class in Dijon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of the city's artisans were masters rather than journeyman craftsmen, a group that made up roughly one-third of the city's population during the period. Forming a "middling sort" between Dijon's vignerons below them and the mercantile and legal establishments above them on the social and economic scale, these master artisans nevertheless played a significant role in the life of the city. The author argues that these artisans behaved as a nascent class--a group who not only sought to distance themselves from the journeymen and winegrowers below them in order to establish ties with the elites, but who also shared common goals, ambitions, and a perception of themselves as distinct.