Featured A collection of title pages by the Plantin Press (17th/18th C.)

The Plantin Press was founded by Christopher Plantin in 1555. When he died in 1589 he left the company to his son-in-law Jan Moerentorff (Moretus). Until 1877 the Moretus dynasty lead the company.

In the earlier days, the printing company printed all kinds of books: atlasses (Ortelius), medical books, philosophy, history and religious books. From the halfway the 17th century, they printed mainly liturgical books for priests, monasteries and churches. A large part of the books was ment for the Spanish speaking part of the world, so you can still find these books in libraries in Spain/Portugal and in the Latin-American countries.

A few weeks ago I bought a collection of 10 complete and 50 fragments of title pages, printed by the Plantin Press in Antwerp during the 17th and 18th century. I think most of the title pages never made it into books, but they were printers' waste. If they were parts of books, it was almost certain they had owner marks and dirt on them.

Collecting old paper doesn't have to be expensive. I bought all these 60 fragments for 50 euro, so that is less than a euro (read dollar) each .

Most people would find such a collection not very interesting, but for a book nerd like me, it is great to research!


This is a typical title page of the Plantin Press. It is a payer book for a priest (breviary), printed in 1693 by Balthasar Moretus (III).


Another title page as one big engraving. Date unknown.



This title page is quite different, but I like it very much. A liturgical choir book, specially made for the Carmelite order (1650).



This was ment for a priest manual for the diocese of Gand (Belgium 1661). Made by Cornelis van Koukerken.



Most of the fragments are the lower halves of a complete page, like this addition to a breviary (1769), made for Franciscan monks.



Some pages even are uncut, like these Books of Hours, printed for the order of Carmelites (1700)



This addition was made for the Spanish market with Santiago (Saint James, the apostle), printed in 1761. The engraving shows the Matamoros where James appeared for Spanish troops attacking the Moors in 859 AD.



Here is a picture of all of the scans of the fragments.



It reminds me of a board in the printing room of the Plantin-Moretus museum, where a lot of book fragments are displayed. Some of the fragments I showed are actually on this board. I think this is the least photographed part of the museum, because it is so reflective, so sorry for the quality.



This is the printing room in the museum.



If you wat to see all the scans, click here:

Plantin Title Pages Fragments - Google Photos
Plantin Title Pages Complete - Google Photos

 

Love Graphic Arts-those are wonderful little Broadsides & cheap.Why have a print at those prices ?

 

I really don’t know. Maybe there isn’t just much demand for them.

 

They're quite lovely small hand done works of art-who knows ?

 

Yes-- very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

Fellow book nerd here. Wow!!! Major impressive!!

 

A bit off topic: your last picture struck a chord with me, having nothing to do with the content. After mulling the subject for several hours off and on, it hit me! The gentleman in your photo is standing exactly as the one in Carl Spitzweg's painting of The Cactus Lover, just reversed!

CS is a favorite of mine!

 

Hahaha, I stole this picture from internet. The others I made myself.

 

A lovely group. I suggest a possible alternative origin: title page collecting was an execrable hobby in the Victorian era and earlier, much to the bane of future bibliophiles, so maybe these are part of one such collection, though the one double you have does argue for printer's scraps.

See Blades' "Enemies of Books": p. 118: "it is a serious matter when Nature produces such a wicked old biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last century, went about the country, from library to library, tearing away title pages from rare books of all sizes. These he sorted out into nationalities and towns, and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript notes, and miscellaneous collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred folio volumes, now preserved in the British Museum. That they are of service as materials in compiling a general history of printing cannot be denied, but the destruction of many rare books was the result, and more than counter-balanced any benefit bibliographers will ever receive from them."

P. 120: "Mr. Proëme is a man well known to the London dealers in old books. He is wealthy, and cares not what he spends to carry out his bibliographical craze, which is the collection of title pages. These he ruthlessly extracts, frequently leaving the decapitated carcase of the books, for which he cares not, behind him. Unlike the destroyer Bagford, he has no useful object in view, but simply follows a senseless kind of classification. For instance: One set of volumes contains nothing but copper-plate engraved titles, and woe betide the grand old Dutch folios of the seventeenth century if they cross his path."

 

A pox upon him!!!

 

Yes, I know there were people that destroyed books to collect pages or pictures (Otto Ege was a bookdealer that cut up many manuscripts for example).


Most of the pages in this collection are in pristine condition. On almost all the title pages in my books are owners marks: names, library stamps, dirt or remains of handling the books. Except one or two pages they lack all of this. Also most of the pages are not cut symmetrical. That makes me think they are never used in a book.

 

I think you're right. Looks like they all have copperplate engravings on them - perhaps, as copperplate printing was a completely different process from printing type, they are remains from the shop where the copperplates were engraved and printed, proof copies, making sure the engraved image was of the right size and going in the right place.