Plantin-Moretus Printing Museum in Antwerp

[benwiggy]

If you're ever in Antwerp, I strongly recommend you go to the Plantin-Moretus Museum. It's housed in the 16th-century house where Christoph Plantijn founded his printing business in the 1550s, and where it continued for over 300 years.

While most of it is focused on type and illustrations, there is also some music, including a display of punches used to print music. Here's some (of the many) photos I took. Hope they're not too big. (Apologies for the ghostly hands/shadows - the lighting was such that it was impossible to do otherwise.)

The music tools are labelled as 'punches', and were used to make holes into which molten type would be poured.

The photo of the Kyrie is actually from a digital screen. I particularly liked the sketched layout of the title pages of a breviary.

[David Ward]

Thank you for posting this: it's very interesting.