California Italian Studies

The case studies presented here, the porcelain factory at Capodimonte (1740-1759) and the textile factory at San Leucio (1789-1860), though relatively distant in time, and promoted by different governments, should be considered sequential, precisely because of their ability to impose systemic innovations. Both cases represent organizational structures using up-to-date production technologies and innovative management, with the work organized and divided according to a precise apportionment of roles, dominated by a top-down hierarchy of the different production units with a high level of interaction between the different workshops, coordinated by a director for each sector. The two royal companies had a carefully designed layout with distribution facilities positioned near the production areas. Anticipating the utopias of the Enlightenment, the two factories were equipped with buildings capable of allowing workers to live with their families in the same place as the factory by adopting a small-scale phalanstery-style solution at Capodimonte (73 units) and a larger one in San Leucio (a thousand workers at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a total of about 200 families by the mid nineteenth century). The Royal Silk Factory of San Leucio diversified its production over seventy years through the development of new technologies and new materials, extending centers to locations close to the village of San Leucio, Vaccheria, Briano, and Puccianello, thus creating a real textile production district.