A group of Italian Renaissance velvet textiles, created over three centuries as part of the mercantile system, were traded over time in Europe until 1927, when they were shipped to the U.S. as educational objects. Traded again, they eventually came to rest as the Cranbrook Collection, laying undisturbed for over fifty years in the archives of the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. These fragments form the basis for this thesis,...