This article analyses the Female Silk Spinning Apprenticeship School of the Barcelona Board of Trade (1784-1792) to explore the intersections between technological change, spinners’ dexterity, and yarn quality. Dexterity was crucial for performing high-quality silk spinning, but the piece-rate remuneration system incentivised spinners to work as fast as possible, thereby downgrading the quality. In the prelude to the Industrial Revolution, the shift from hand spinning to mechanised spinning was a gradual process of technological innovation in which silk yarn’s quality depended on technology, spinners’ dexterity and the interaction with the institutional framework that either encouraged yarn quality through daily wages or discouraged it through piece-rates.