A Brill Calendar: May 14

A Visit to a Museum in Antwerp...

Few museums evoke the magic of Gutenberg’s typography – called ‘Black Art’ upon its invention – as exactly as the Plantijn-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Flanders.

It is a meticulously maintained time-machine, granting an immersion in the world of printing, publishing and book-selling during its adolescence. Squadrons of hand-powered presses, divisions of plates and legions of type form the heart of the collection, bringing the ‘officinium’ and its envelope – an organism within the endlessly fascinating city – truly to life. Ledgers, shelves packed with books, prints & products, utensils, furniture and framed portraits of celebrities in the history of a distinguished House during two centuries complement the experience: this is how typography shaped Europe before the French Revolution.

Christoffel Plantijn (ca. 1520 - 1589) was appointed Printer to the Leyden Academy late in life; spring 1583. In the two hectic and dramatic years following, the Antwerp office, with city officials anxious about Plantijn’s ‘political correctness’, could operate without his personal presence. A typical day under this arrangement was May 14 1584; when Plantijn in the far north didn’t care to become official Printer to the States of Holland, putting his trust in a sagacity concerning eggs & baskets. Soon after, Antwerp was conquered by Habsburg Spain, (27 August 1585 to be precise), and remained under that regime for two centuries. The old man returned to the city where he started his enterprise in 1549.

It is seldom that ‘une machine à vivre & à produire’ functioned so well so long. The crux for metamorphosis into a Museum - on original premises – , after the extinct Moretus dynasty, is loving admiration in early 19th century Antwerp for an ‘e-normous’ ensemble. The public time-machine of the 21st century is venerable in its own right.