The Content Reader

As we all know, or at least, thought we know, Gutenberg is the father of modern typography. Now taking a course with the University of Leicester on England in the times of Richard III,  we have reached the chapter on printing. We are now in the 15th century, when printing of manuscripts and books started. To my surprise, there seems to be 'recent events' that indicates that Gutenberg was not the first one with doing moulds in wood. Well, it seems that the 'recent events' refer to research from 2001, so nowadays, it is not so recent. An article in The New York Times   says that the mould printing acknowledge to Gutenberg, was a gradual process that went on 20 years after Gutenberg's first attempts. The mould printing made all letters the same size and you therefore had a print which looked the same. Two scientists have checked the printing of Gutenberg, and can see that there are slight discrepancies in the letters from his printing. They think that he made the mo...

Rockox House Yesterday, Karin and I went to Antwerp to visit the Rockox house and museum. Since the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp is on repair, part of their collection is shown in this house. So who was Rockox? He lived in Antwerp from 1560-1640, born into a wealthy, bourgeois family, and studied in Leuven, Paris and Douai (a town in north eastern France (I had to look it up!). Married to Adriana Perez, who also came from an old and wealthy merchant family (of Spanish origin). During the first half of the 17th century he was an important figure in the political, artistic as well as in the social life of Antwerp. At one time he was a mayor. He gained an exceptional reputation as a patron, antiquarian, humanist and numismatist (the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects; had to look this up as well; thank you Wikipedia). Interested in the arts, he commissioned, and hereby supported the local artists, including Rubens. He als...

This morning the sun was shining for a change, so I decided to go to Antwerp, to visit a few more museums and churches. When I got closer I realised that Antwerp is grey and no sunshine. Hmm, should maybe have stayed in Brussels. However, later in the day the sun came out. Here some photos from the day. From a private collector's museum Mayer van den Bergh. Lovely paintings and other collections. There were even some paintings from Brueghel (older and younger). The Library The wall paper of the library. Fantastic!

Ready to go? Recently, I have visited two exhibitions that has the same theme; emigration or immigration, depending on from which view you see it. The exhibitions tells about two ship lines that carried people who wanted to leave their own countries in search for a better life in America; The White Star Line and The Red Star Line The White Star Line This exhibition is about Titanic , the most famous ship of the line and the most tragic. The exhibition is now running on the last month here in Brussels and I visited it on Thursday. It was very interesting. Although you think you know most of the things about this disaster, it is another thing to see items from the boat, personal items from people lost and interiors of how it looked like on the ship. There was also a scientific part with information on how the accident happened and the story of how the wreck was found. The Red Star Line This is a permanent exhibition in Antwerpen and tells the story of this line which was fou...

I was visiting Antwerp the other day. Wanted to look around a little bit and find out more about this interesting, medieval city. Looking around for interesting museums to start with, I found the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Turns out to be much more than I could ever have bargained for. The museum/house tell the history of one of the greatest printer-publishers of all time. It was founded by one of the first ‘industrial’ printers, a brilliant, self-taught man who only Gutenberg himself could beat. His name is Christopher Plantin (ca 1520-1589), from Saint-Avertain, near Tours, in central France. He was the most important printer-publisher of the time, and one of the great pioneers of Western civilisation. Countless are the publications he printed in the fields of humanism and the sciences. Christopher Plantin, was the arch-typographer to Philip II Spain, and in the mid 16th century he transfered his well-known printing office, called The Golden Compass to where it is situated today, i...