Our second day in Antwerp was mainly spent at the Plantin Moretus Museum, which focuses on the printing company of the Plantin-Moretus family (the first industrial printing press in Europe), set in the sixteenth century house in which it all began.
Even on a blustery day, the courtyard was pleasant to walk around and enjoy from an old wooden bench.
The printing press was started by Christoffel Plantijn, who trained as a bookbinder. At the time, books cost as much as houses. During one of his deliveries of the completed book to the buyer, he was stabbed in the arm by a thief who made off with the book. As bookbinding took considerable strength, he was forced to turn away from his trade and took up printing.
The collection of original artefacts from his press is astounding. There are rooms full of the individual letters for moveable typeface in a cornucopia of fonts. While our modern Microsoft Word allows the layman a pick of hundreds of fonts, these men in the 1500's had to manually lay out page after page of individual letters for mass production. This was much faster than previous printing methods, but to compare that practice to hitting the 'print' button on my computer blows my mind. Here you can see the typeface, ink roller and large weighted stamp.
A vast range of engravings were on display, showing how illustrations were transcribed into the books. This was my favourite as it's almost too gruesome to imagine - a man making a skin of himself like a mink coat. Plantijn was prominent in many social circles and had friends provide him with anatomical drawing for textbooks. One specimen we viewed was an early pop-up book with flaps you could lift to show layers of veins underneath (if it wasn't behind glass that is).
This 'virginal' piano is one of four left in the entire world. A friendly staff member told us all about it among other things (she is where I get most of the information in this post). A woman would sit at the front, and a girl would play at the smaller set of keys on the side, which is why this type of instrument is often referred to as a 'mother and daughter' piano.
The staff member emphatically relayed to us her belief that if a war broke out and enemies stormed the city, the Belgian army would defend this museum and no other for the priceless items inside. As well as the piano, the collection displays Gutenberg bibles, Rubens' paintings of Plantijn's friends and family, and the two oldest surviving printing presses.
Her: You know when you eat herring, and you get lots of burps?
Us: ...uh
Her: When you eat these types of picked foods, it is better to sit up during the night.
And so, beds were short because they propped themselves up with pillows so they would burp the night away in comfort.
This photo also shows the grandeur of the house, from the carved bedposts to the fruity Madonna painting to the leather wall coverings. In many of the rooms, there were embossed gilded leather coverings (Cuir de Cordoue) that were decorative to show off wealth and aided with insulation. The technique originated in Northern Africa and quickly spread to Spain and France as an alternative to hanging tapestries.
Two great rooms were devoted to books - the libraries. It was here that Plantijn kept copies of the books he printed or published. As he produced only daughters (and it was unheard of for a woman to run a company), he married his best printer to his second daughter. This was Jan Moretus, who had worked for Plantijn since he was fifteen and who took over the press when he died. Born Jan Moerentorf, he Latinicised his name as was popular among humanists at the time. Devoted to enriching the populace through an education in arts as well as history and maths, the Renaissance humanists were a good bunch, straying away from medieval ignorance.
Our culture meter filled, we went in search of a tasty snack - what other than speculoos? Yet, walking down the street we saw another bakery with a line out the door. Thinking these people must be on to something, we joined the queue and bought what caught our fancy. It turned out to be an amazing almond cake with a butter biscuit base. So moist and flavoursome, I wanted to go back the very next day. And I did.
We bought a packet of their traditional speculoos as well as a larger 'soft' speculoos. The soft ones were also nice, though I prefer a speculoos you can snap in two like the Borrowers windmill that it is. I can honestly say that the best speculoos I've had to date are from Phillip's Biscuits. Well done, Phil. You're a ginger magician. (Speculoos are in the gingerbread family, by the way. I don't know if Phillip is a ginger.)
Though the new taste was upstaged a bit, as our camping neighbour was trying to make some terrifying stove which spouted great gouts of fire occasionally. When the flame went out and we could smells gas, we were fairly concerned we would all go up in smoke. Luckily he achieved what he had been planning after much twisting and shaping of tin foil, and we slept easy knowing he had cooked his high stakes meal and switched the contraption off.
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