A house where nine successive generations shared love, loss, and work: a treasure trove of stories unfolds. Drawn from real life, yet utterly compelling.
Christoffel Plantijn and his son-in-law Jan Moretus formed a revolutionary duo. They were the first printers to operate on an industrial scale, the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg of their time. Four hundred years later, you can still step straight into their world: their house and workplace remain as if they had only just stepped out to the baker.
The art of drawing and writing is a world in its own right, spanning every stage in the creation of visual and literary art, from an initial idea to the final design. Discover here how a thought or fleeting inspiration evolved into a fully printed book.
In the 16th century, many new types of books emerged, and this was largely thanks to publishers such as the Plantin-Moretus family. They sought ways to record and organise new knowledge and ideas on paper. They reflected on how texts could be set more clearly, how image and text relate to one another, and what a title page is. It was here that the book, largely as we still know it today, took shape.
Drawing on the astonishing archives of Christoffel Plantijn and his successors as a primary source, our archivist Kristof Selleslach publishes an English-language blog post every six weeks about everyday life at the Golden Compasses. In these stories, the members of the Moretus family and their staff once again become people of flesh and blood.
