Introduction: The Plantin-Moretus Museum and Its Woodblock Collection

This chapter reviews the aims, methods, and preliminary results of the recent digitization project for the Officina Plantiniana’s woodblocks in the typographical collections of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp. An extraordinarily rich but long overlooked primary resource, the blocks stand to benefit from recent research investigating the role of material culture and visual representation in early modern science by examining the emergence, production, and role of printed images as tools in scientific texts. Making an online clearinghouse of digital images of the blocks linked to basic descriptions in an online catalog, the project facilitates open access to this exceptional and unique collection to enable emerging object-based research that investigates not merely the printed image, but also the matrices used to print them, shedding new light on the Press’s history specifically and early modern printing and knowledge production more broadly.

Christoffel Plantin was born in France c. 1520 and was taught printing and book-binding before moving to Antwerp in 1548 for religious reasons, where he opened his printing office the Officina Plantiniana in 1555. Appointed Prototypographe or chief printer of the city in 1570 by the king of Spain, he was regarded as the period’s foremost printer. By 1575, his operations were based in buildings that now constitute the Plantin-Moretus Museum and boasted sixteen presses, 32 printers, twenty compositors, three proof-readers, and one unskilled laborer, in addition to numerous skilled artisans to whom he contracted out work.