The Printer's Techniques and Methods

Chapter 5
The Printing Shop

The work of a printing press requires quite complicated equipment, and to understand the plant and tools it is necessary to have some idea of how this work was done. Moxon in 1683-84, the Encyclopédie française in 1769, and various other books1. devote fairly lengthy passages to it. But once more it is the author of the Dialogues françois et flamands of 1567 who is most helpful with his businesslike descriptions of the various operations and the principal implements.2.

E: When it is a question of printing any book, it is given to the compositor, who assembles the types that are distributed separately in the case, in which there are as many boxes as there are different types.

G: I follow so far.

E: Then he fastens the copy on which he wishes to work to a visorum, which is a long wooden piece that supports the copy, and for fear lest it become folded he fixes a mordant, which is a cleft stick going crosswise. That done, he takes his composing stick, also of wood, wherein he sets the lines, and as he completes them he places them in a galley where the pages are made up.

G: Then do you print the pages, one after the other?

E: Not at all. But when he has set two or four or six or eight of them, depending on the size of the book, he imposes them all together in a chase.

G: What is this chase?

E: It is a square, made of six bars of iron of which four form the sides and the other two a cross at the middle, so that there are four small squares in which the pages are imposed.

G: Are all chases made this way?

E: No. Sometimes there is only one crosspiece and sometimes none at all. That is on account of the difference in the size of books.

G: These pages imposed, what does he do?

E: He justifies them and locks them with wooden furniture, of which some pieces are called headers (head-sticks), tapered (side- and foot-) sticks, reglets, and quotations - so called because they are used for the quotations that are placed in the margins.

G: That being done, how does he lock them in the chase? For there must be innumerable pieces.

E: It is true. However, he locks them with quoins in such a way that all the pieces are pressed in from every side, like the staves of a wooden measure by its hoops.

E: The forme made up this way is handed over to the two pressmen who operate the press.

G: It is necessary now for you to explain the press.

E: First, the press is made firm between two sister twins (cheeks), set upright on two paws (feet). They are joined by two summers (head and winter) and are made secure above with stays, pins, and keys which hold fast and steady all the top part.

G: Then is it a business of such great force?

E: You will hear. Between the sister twins the screw (spindle) is located, fitted in the hose. The pivot (head) of this spindle enters into the nut supported by crampons. It then rests on the stud bedded in the top of the platen. This platen is a large and broad piece of iron which covers all that has to be printed and is attached by means of rings.

G: This is not enough. What means is there to make the spindle go round?

E: There is a bar which, being pulled by the handle, lowers the spindle and, being pushed back on to its catch, raises it.

G: Then when work is under way the printer pulls the bar in order to bring the platen down on the forme and when he wishes to take off his sheet he pushes the bar back?

E: So it is. But it must be understood that the forme is put on a marble or stone set in the coffin, at the four corners of which there are corner irons holding the chase. This coffin is on a plank with cramp-irons underneath and runs backward and forward the length of the cradle (ribs) by means of a spit below, upon which the rounce is fitted.

G: Then turning the rounce brings all the coffin forward under the platen and sends it back again after the operation?

E: You are quite right. The cradle does not move, and is supported at one end by the press itself and at the other by a wooden upright called the foot (forestay). On the hind end of the coffin is a large (outer) tympan, attached by means of iron joints, and the small (inner) tympan goes inside it, so that the blankets are held between them.

G: What are these blankets for?

E: The blankets are placed between the platen and the forme lest the platen, by its great hardness, should batter it.

G: But is the paper never going to be laid on?

E: I am coming to that. The paper is laid on top of the tympan. It is pricked on to two small points fastened to the large tympan by means of screws and nuts, so it can be got at easily for the reiteration. The reiteration is done when the paper is turned over for printing on the other side.

G: The paper being stretched out thus, is it printed at once?

E: No, not yet, for it must be covered by a frisket, held firm by hasps.

G: What is this frisket?

E: It is a parchment covering all parts of the forme not to be printed, such as the space between pages, the margins, and all white spaces.

G: It is done then, for all I can see.

E: Not yet, for it is necessary to have dampened the paper on the previous day so that it is evenly moist.

G: Why so?

E: Otherwise the ink, although very sticky, would not take hold. On being dampened the paper is placed between two planks so that it stays flat and takes the water better. Meanwhile the ink balls are being prepared.

G: What are the ink balls?

E: They are for putting ink on the forme. They are made, first, of a wooden stock, then some well-carded wool stuffed into it, which is covered by pelts nailed all round the wood. That done, ink is taken which clings to the leather, and it is beaten on the forme, which retains as much as is needed for printing.

G: Is it possible the type takes that without anything further?

E: It is, and for that reason the ink must be thick and sticky lest it should run while on the type.

G: What is there to do then?

E: The tympan is then lowered, the frisket being fixed, and taking the rounce by the handle the pressman makes the coffin enter halfway under the platen. The bar is pulled for the first time, the coffin is run on in the other half, and the bar pulled a second time.

G: Why is the coffin not run clear in the first time?

E: Because the platen cannot cover the whole forme...

G: And what is done with the forme when all copies are printed?

E: When they are about to finish work they heat some lye in a kettle. This being done they put the forme in a big trough where it is rubbed and cleansed with brush and lye, which gets rid of all the remaining ink. That done, they give it back again to the compositor for distribution of the types, each one back to the box from which he had taken it.

Thus the compositors used type-cases,1. composing sticks,2. galleys,3. visorums,4. and chases. The pressmen required rather more equipment: the presses themselves and all that appertained to them; ink balls,5. basins and troughs for moistening the paper,6. lye-troughs for washing the formes.7. There also had to be a sufficient number of trays, boxes, trestles, and table-tops to hand in the printing shop, not to mention such items as hammers, saws, ladders, and so on.

The press

The printing-press was the most complicated and most expensive of all these.8. It was the only piece of equipment that invariably figured

in the firm's inventories. The expensiveness was only relative, however. The inventory made in 1589-90 after Plantin's death listed ten presses, valued at 50 fl. each, 500 fl. altogether.1. Fifty guilders at that time represented roughly one third of the year's wages of a pressman or compositor; 500 fl. was approximately what Plantin spent on vermilion and ink in the period 1586 to 1589. A great deal of money has to be invested in machinery in a modern printing works. The price of a printing-press in Plantin's day was not especially high; compared with paper and cast type, it amounted to only a fraction of the total running costs - and of course it lasted much longer.

The estimated values in the inventory of 1589-90 are generally a little lower than the actual purchase price of the presses. When Plantin had to re-equip his officina in 1563-65, he paid between 50 and 60 fl. each for the seven presses he bought or commissioned.2. The presses he had formerly owned had been auctioned with the rest of his effects in 1562 at widely divergent prices: one went for only 37 fl. 10 st., another for 57 fl., while the remaining two fetched 75 fl. and 75 fl. 15 st.3.

The fact that a good printing-press in Plantin's day cost on average a modest 50 to 60 fl. explains why he was able to expand his business so quickly and why he and his successors were able to bear up under economic recession without too much difficulty. The capital invested in the machines did not greatly depress the profitability of the firm. It did not require much money to put a new machine into operation and no great financial loss was entailed when some presses were temporarily out of action. Laying in sufficient stocks of type as his business expanded cost Plantin far more in the period 1563 to 1576 than the purchase of printing-presses.

The description of the printing-press in the Dialogues françois et flamands, although brief, shows how the apparatus worked and what its component parts were. The presses had to be capable of two movements, one horizontal and one vertical. In the horizontal movement the coffin with the stone, on which the chase with the forme

rested, was pushed forward by means of a handle. This brought the coffin under the platen. In the vertical movement the platen was lowered, by means of a lever and by way of a spindle attached to a crosspiece between two upright supports, until it pressed on the forme. The horizontal movement made it possible for the forme to be properly quoined, or locked up, and then unlocked, and the operations of inking, feeding in the blank paper, and removing the printed sheet to be carried out. The vertical movement performed the actual printing, lowering the platen so that the paper came into contact with the inked forme. There had to be some means of ensuring that the paper was applied with the greatest possible speed and precision against the inked forme as required. This was achieved in a simple but ingenious manner with the tympan,1. which was attached to the coffin and could be folded down on the forme, and the frisket, jointed to the tympan.

The type of press described in the Dialogues françois et flamands of 1567 must have been comparatively new at the time. As far as can be made out from the fairly numerous woodcuts of the first half of the sixteenth century depicting printing-presses and the places where they were installed, these machines were quite primitive and crude until about 1525, when they began to take on the form described in the Dialogues.2. The construction of this newer type was regarded as so satisfactory that it remained in use without important modification until early in the nineteenth century, when incipient mechanization in the shape of the Stanhope iron press (1800) began to revolutionize the industry. Small improvements were, however, made in the intervening years, in particular to the platen and the mechanism operating it.

Moxon in 1683-84 described at great length what he called the ‘new-fashioned press’.3. The real difference between this and the ‘old-

fashioned press’, which Moxon also described, lay in the fact that in the former the wooden casing around the spindle had been replaced by an iron fitting rather like a yoke; the platen was still attached in the same way, that is to say it was suspended by cords, but from the underneath of the ‘yoke’ this time. The new arrangement gave greater elasticity and smoothness of operation, printing becoming more even and the lever springing back more easily.

Moxon ascribed the invention of the new press to the famous Dutch cartographer and printer Willem Janszoon Blaeu († 1638), but Dutch sources are completely silent about this aspect of Blaeu's work.1. Whatever the truth of this may be, a medal of the Middelburg printers' guild of 1631 depicts a press of this new type.2. It may be assumed that presses with iron yokes, whether or not they were invented by Blaeu, were first built in the Northern Netherlands around 1625. At some later date the system was again improved by fixing the platen directly to the yoke by screws or other means: this made it much easier to get the platen level, which produced an even better distribution of pressure.

The ‘new-fashioned press’ meant an improvement in quality of work, although not necessarily of speed. Its use, however, did not spread quickly. When Moxon devoted so much space to this Dutch invention, it was to urge his countrymen to take it up. How far he was successful remains open to question. The only eighteenth-century presses extant in Britain and America belong to the old-fashioned type.3. In France and Germany too the old type remained in use. Only one kind of press was described by the Encyclopédie française in 1769, and this was the sort that Plantin used. But the printer's descendants profited from the technological advance on the part of their northern colleagues.

The Plantin-Moretus Museum has seven presses which all date from before 1800. Five of them are of the improved Blaeu type, with

platens attached by screws to the iron yoke.1. The other two are, to judge from their wooden frames, considerably older, and must go back to the time of Plantin or at least Jan Moretus. This makes them the oldest presses in the world. Both have the Blaeu yoke. Their platens have disappeared, but from the construction of the lower parts of the yokes it would seem that the platens were suspended.2. This, therefore, was the earliest form of iron yoke, fitted to older presses in the course of the seventeenth century.

Dutch typographers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were ahead technically of their foreign counterparts. But whereas in France, Germany and - despite the efforts of Moxon - England, the example of the Dutch had little effect, the Moretuses faithfully adopted all their improvements. How quickly they did this is another question. Careful sifting of the accounts submitted by the joiners and smiths who worked for the Plantin house might make it possible to say exactly when these Dutch inventions were applied there - and this in turn might enable the advent of the Blaeu yoke and its improved version to be dated more accurately.

Contemporary sources provide some interesting details of the component parts of presses of Plantin's day, and especially of what they cost. At the end of 1563, after his possessions had been auctioned in the Vrijdagmarkt, Plantin faced the problem of re-establishing his officina. It was at this time that he went into partnership with a number of financial backers to whom he had to render account, so naturally his book-keeping had to be more detailed than he thought necessary in later years, when he was again sole master of the firm. The accounts for the years 1563-67 allow the equipment of the printing shop to be traced down to the smallest detail.

In October 1563 Plantin bought his ‘presse à imprimer no. 1’.3. The total cost of 59 fl. 3½ st. was made up as follows:

Press no. 2 was an old one which the cabinet-maker Michel de la Motte and the locksmith Matheis had to set about refurbishing. Plantin's notes show that in the end there was little of the original press left.1. The third press was built specially for Plantin by De la Motte and Matheis, although the spindle, escrieu, and platen came from Paris.2. Numbers 5 and 7 were also constructed by the two

Antwerp craftsmen.1. Numbers 4 and 6 were again ‘old presses with their appurtenances’ which, however, were in reasonably good condition and did not need such extensive renovation as no. 2.2.

In these various entries in the accounts, two items are always specified: the imposing stone and the platen. If the former was broken the press might be put out of action for quite a long time, and so the farsighted Plantin was always careful to have a small reserve of imposing stones to hand.3. When specified, the platens appear to have been made of copper and their prices reckoned by weight.4. Plantin also bought spares of these: in the years 1563-67 four to seven working presses.5. The inventory made of Plantin's estate in

1589-90 mentions as many as nine spare platens in addition to the ten on the working presses.1.

The fact that the account-books imply that all these platens were of copper is interesting.2. The author of the Dialogues françois et flamands describes the platen as a ‘large and wide piece of iron’. When Plantin's possessions were auctioned one press was listed as having two platens ‘one of metal and one of iron’.3. Moxon too only makes mention of an ‘iron plate’. On the other hand the use of copper or copper-covered platens seems to have been the rule in Holland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.4. All the presses preserved in the Plantin-Moretus Museum have copper platens.

The tympan and frisket completed the printing-press. Curiously enough the price of the tympan itself was hardly ever quoted.5. In all probability it was treated as one of the basic components, its price included in that of the ironwork, and one per press must have been deemed sufficient. Friskets were mentioned just as infrequently. Three of the four presses sold in 1562 had two friskets each, the other three. The old press (no. 4) which Plantin bought in 1564 also had two among its apartenances. Probably two friskets per press continued to be the rule in the newly constituted printing shop and these were presumably included in the prices of the presses the printer ordered in 1563 and subsequent years, but there were just a few that he bought separately.6.

Chases served to take the made-up formes. In strict ‘demarcation’ terms they belonged to the compositors' sphere of operations although

they ended up on the presses when ready. As a rule they were listed as appurtenances of the presses. Three of the four presses sold in 1562 had three chases, the other two. Press no. 4 which Plantin bought in April 1564 had three, while for no. 6, the press acquired at the auction of the estate of Susato, the number rose to four. The inventory of Plantin's estate in 1590 has the entry, ‘aussi quelques chassis ou rames de fer outre les 2 servantes à chacune presse’,1. which makes it clear that two chases for each press (or perhaps better: at least two for each press) was then the general rule. And this is quite understandable: while one was on the press, the compositor had to have another one available so that he could continue imposing the set pages. These items of equipment were not as a rule included in the price of the presses which Plantin ordered. Moreover, they were sometimes supplied by other tradesmen than the locksmith who built most of the ironwork for Plantin's machinery.2.

When the presses were installed, great care had to be taken to ensure that they stood perfectly level and that they were properly supported: the movement of the coffin and of the handle of the platen caused a degree of vibration that would otherwise affect the stability and the good operation of the machine. The money Plantin paid his joiners for supporting beams constituted a further expense.3.

This did not complete the list of equipment needed by the pressmen. They had to have troughs and basins for wetting the paper.

Between October 1563 and January 1566 Plantin bought 45 es à tremper le papier (at 3 st. each this came to 6 fl. 15 st.); 4 grands es à tremper le papier de l'Anatomie (5 st. each: 1 fl.); 1 tinnette à 3 pieds pour tremper le papier (10 st.).1. Six es à tremper were purchased with the second-hand press which became no. 4. Total expenditure on this item was therefore 8 fl. 5 st.

The formes had to be washed after use. For this purpose the following were bought in October 1563: bac de bois à laver les fourmes, this wooden trough costing 2 fl. 10 st.; pied [stand] de bois pour poser le bac à laver (10 st.); tonnelet à mectre la potasse tremper pour la lessive (10 st.); borstel [brush] à laver les formes de laissive (4½ st.); chaudron servant à la lessive (6 pounds at 3½ st. per pound, making 1 fl. 1 st.).2. Altogether this came to 4 fl. 15½ st.

For inking the formes the pressmen employed ink balls (basles), using them two at a time. They were not expensive. Between October 1563 and March 1566 Plantin entered the sum of 4 fl. 4 st. in his account-books for this item, this sum buying him 42 pairs of bois de basles at 2 st. per pair.3. In October 1563 and again in January 1565 he spent 9 st. on 600 cloux de basles; these were used for tacking on the leather that covered the ink balls. The leather had to be cut to size, and for this further implements were necessary.4. Hammers were needed to drive home the tacks, and Plantin bought six of these for 1 fl. 1 st. (3½ st. each).5. The wool with which the ink balls were stuffed had to be carded; the two escardes for this purpose cost 3½ st. and 4 st.6.

Ink had to be prepared, stored, and applied. For these purposes were purchased: 1 tonnelet à encre (7 st.); 1 broyeur à encre and a small pot à huille (2½ st.); 1 ancrier à noir et rouge ou a esté employé la pierre du bac d'une presse veille, pour faceon (2 fl. 10 st.); 1 tréteau à bac à lencre (3 fl.); 1 grande pierre avec une meullette à broyer le vermilion (3 fl. 15 st.); and 2 palettes à encre (4 st. each); a total of 10 fl. 2½ st.1. Each printing-press also had its own ink duct, but this was presumably included in the basic price,2. as were some of the many other small items.3.

Compositors' equipment

The type-setters' equipment was less expensive. Their principal tool was the composing stick. Plantin bought remarkably few of these. The author has been able to find mention of only twelve for the period 1564 to 1566.4. The first purchase entered in the accounts dates from 1st April 1564, that is to say a few months after Plantin had started work again. According to Moxon composing sticks in England in his day were the personal property of the compositors,5. and probably this was already the rule in Plantin's establishment. What Plantin did supply were galleys. These were of two kinds, those for composing and those for distributing.6. Between October 1563 and 16th March 1566 Plantin bought 32 galleys.7. For these and the composing sticks mentioned above he paid a total of 9 fl. 15 st.

A much more important item of expenditure were the type-cases, divided into small compartments, each of them reserved for a particular letter. Letters are not used with equal frequency and so, for example, z requires a smaller compartment than e or a. It will be obvious that the compartments were arranged not in alphabetical order, but so that the most used letters were easiest of access - on the same principle as the keyboard of a modern typewriter. However, just as there are today different keyboards in use, so the arrangement of the type-cases varied from place to place in those days, as they do now, and possibly even from one printer to another.1. It has not been possible to reconstruct the arrangement in use in the Plantinian press.

One problem connected with type-cases can be cleared up, thanks to the firm's account-books. Moxon speaks of a ‘pair of cases’, namely a lower case for the small letters and an upper case for the capitals. He was the first to mention specifically the existence of such a pair of cases. In his commentary on Moxon2. Harry Carter, the British expert, quotes two English texts of 1588 which speak of pairs of cases. The continental texts that Carter cites point to a single case. The Dialogues françois et flamands of 1567 talks of la casse divided into cassetins, and a French text of 1575 put it in much the same terms: ‘une grande casse de bois pleine de petits cassis’. Finally Carter quotes a text from the Plantinian records which indicates the same arrangement.3. He believed that, unlike the English expression, the French bas-de-casse, haut-de-casse, and the Dutch onderkast, bovenkast go back to a time when only a single case was in use. He makes the pertinent observation that the ‘double’ case only came into use where alphabets with both large and small capitals, such as the roman and the italic, were adopted. In areas such as Germany and Eastern Europe, where the black letter and the Cyrillic alphabets with one kind of capital held sway, the single large type-case was adhered to.

Plantin's accounts for the years 1563 to 1567 allow the discussion

to be satisfactorily concluded. The printer seems to have had both single cases and pairs made - thirty of the former and eighty-one of the latter.1. The predominance of pairs seems to indicate that they were employed for roman and italic. In some instances the types for which the cases were intended is indicated: ‘3 paires à compositions latines’ and ‘6 paires à lectres latines’ next to ‘6 casses pour lectres latines’ and ‘6 casses à lectres communes’. The two latter entries show that not all roman and italic types had double cases; but then not all of Plantin's examples of these alphabets had two kinds of capitals. It must have been the presence or absence of small capitals that decided the choice of case. Hebrew alphabets, without the difference between capitals and lower case, all had single cases, whenever specified.2. Greek alphabets had both kinds.3.

Prices of cases fluctuated around 1 fl., although in some instances as much as 3 fl. and 3 fl. 6 st. was paid. Casses and paires de casses seem to have cost virtually the same to produce and their prices were therefore similar. The price per unit was small, but the large number purchased brought total expenditure on this item up to 132 fl. 11 st.

The cases were placed on a kind of stand, so that they were slightly at an angle.1. In October 1563 Plantin took delivery of ‘4 paires de tresteaux à poser les casses de la composition lesquels ie luy avoit faict faire et se peuvent ioindre dos à dos l'un contre lautre ou bien se séparer lequel quon veut’, for which he paid 3 fl. per pair. In the period up to 15th June 1566 the printer bought a further 14 tréteaux and 2 paires de tréteaux.2. Altogether these cost him 37 fl. 3 st. Type-cases that were not put into immediate use had to be stored somewhere, and for this purpose Plantin bought a number of estallages.3. He also provided himself with a stand à 18 liettes pour les lectres fleuries et figures (6 fl. 15 st.) and with another à mectre les lectres par pages (4 fl. 7½ st.). An old chest was converted into an estallage pour mectre les fourmats (1 fl. 11½ st.).4. The total cost of all these stands was 20 fl. 9 st.

Until recently compositors usually worked standing up, but until the end of the seventeenth century pictures of printing shops show them seated at their tasks, as is usual in modern composing rooms today. This was the case in Plantin's establishment, as is shown by his purchase on 29th November 1563 of 8 bancs de chesne pour asseoir les compositeurs. These oak benches cost 4 fl. 16 st. altogether and were followed by half a dozen stools - escabelles à seoir les compositeurs (1 fl. 12 st.).

Making up the formes and quoining them required pegs, wooden

slats, and the like. In October 1563 Plantin began his purchases of these items with 15 Flemish ells of reglets ‘for the Virgil formes’. In the following period, up to 10th March 1566, hundreds more ells of reglets and hundreds of pegs and pièces de format were bought, costing 46 fl. 9½ st. in all. Six iron hammers ‘for locking the formes’ were bought at 2 st. each.1.

The equipment mentioned above was enough to enable the pressmen and compositors to perform their tasks, but Plantin still had to find money for a whole range of minor but essential odds and ends. He paid 26 fl. 3½ st. for a number of chests,2. ladders,3. and benches for the formes and paper;4. and a further 29 fl. 6½ st. for barrels, buckets, wooden bowls, baskets, etc.5.

Pressmen and compositors began early in the morning and worked until late in the evening. For much of the day, at least in the winter months, they had to work by artificial light. Plantin provided individual lighting in the form of candlesticks, and supplied candle snuffers.6. All this cost him a modest 2 fl. 3¾ st.

The entries in Plantin's account-books for 1563-66 enable the present-day reader to visualize the printing shop in the Golden Compasses, with its presses and their accessories, with type-cases, trestles and stands, with benches, troughs, and all the small items essential to a swift and smooth flow of work. The expansion of the business in the years 1567 to 1576 led to many further purchases of equipment. Plantin and his successors regularly paid considerable sums to carpenters and locksmiths for their work on presses and the repair or replacement of chases, friskets, tympans, galleys, and water troughs. After 1567, however, it is difficult to make out which were entirely new purchases and which merely replacement items. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that another inventory was made of the equipment, and even then it was not a complete one. The ‘inventory of the equipment in the printing shop on 15th April 1745’1. listed: 11 presses, 64 iron chases, 70 galleys (large and small, good and bad indiscriminately mixed), 17 ‘trekbakjes’ (?), 84 ‘trekhaken’ (?), 19 brass basins, 22 type-cases, 2 trays of quoins, 86 deal table tops, 62 hardwood tables for putting formes on, 5 proof-reading tables, 21 trays for wool, 13 trays for the formes, 12 stones on which the formes could be corrected.

Only a part of all this equipment has survived. The inventory of the printing shop and the type room in the Plantin-Moretus Museum now lists two presses without their platens,2. five presses with all their appurtenances (platens, friskets, tympans and inking systems), one press for intaglio printing, 9 friskets, 5 ink balls with leather coverings, 11 ink balls without covering, 5 ‘stones’ [= marble], set on wooden stands, on which formes could be corrected, 323 type-cases, some of them placed on stands (the trestles that Plantin noted) in the printing shop, some

stacked in the type room on racks (the estallages entered in the accounts for 1563-67), 34 galleys, 39 composing sticks, 14 iron chases, 16 iron strips for dividing up the chases, one candlestick with snuffer. In addition there is in one of the cellars a stone trough that was once used for wetting paper. Comparison of the two lists shows that many objects have been lost, including the trays for wool, the copper basins, the table tops, and other items. The greater part of what is left can probably be dated to before 1800, but, with the exception of the intaglio press (1714), it would be difficult to hazard exact dates and places of manufacture.

The fact that the prices of the items Plantin bought in the years 1563 to 1567 are specified makes the inventory particularly interesting, and gives an idea of what the equipping of a large-scale concern such as he built up would have entailed in terms of money. He spent 553 fl. 10½ st. on the printing shop: 387 fl. 14½ st. on the presses, 135 fl. 11½ st. on spare stones and platens, chases, friskets, tympans, and other associated items, and only 30 fl. 4½ st. on the rest (ink balls, troughs and water basins, utensils for washing the formes and preparing and storing ink).

Fitting out the composing or type room cost just 253 fl. 7½ st. Of this, 132 fl. 11 st. went on type-cases, 37 fl. 3 st. on the stands for the cases, 20 fl. 9 st. on the estallages, 6 fl. 8 st. for benches, 46 fl. 9½ st. for wood for formes and quoins and only 9 fl. 5 st. for the type-setters' composing sticks and galleys. Finally there was a further 61 fl. 3 st. spent on candlesticks, benches, and other furniture that was used by both pressmen and type-setters.

The total cost to Plantin of fitting out his workshop in the period 1563-67 was therefore 868 fl. 1 st., more than half of which (523 fl. 6 st.) was accounted for by the presses and their accessories. This was not an enormous sum. And this was moreover equipment that lasted a long time so that in favourable circumstances the capital invested could easily be recovered.

What has been said about the relatively low cost of the presses compared to the firm's total capital and running costs also applies to the

whole of the equipment and furniture of the printing shop and type room. This is confirmed in the inventory of Plantin's estate. The total value of his business at Antwerp was estimated at 18,000 fl. The presses were valued at 50 fl. each, 500 fl. altogether; the cast type at 8,800 fl.; the punches and matrices at 2,201 fl.; and the wood-blocks and copperplates for illustrations at 6,723 fl. All the rest was included in the total of 18,000 fl. without further itemization: ‘Par dessus tout cecy et parmy l'achapt de 18,000 fl. sont comprises toutes les casses, bacqs, mandes, tréteaux, formats, 9 platines à part, comme aussi quelques chassis ou rames de fer outre les 2 servantes à chacune presse, et toute telle menuté d'imprimerie.’1. This means that in 1589 the contents of the printing shop and type room were assessed at 500 fl. (the value of the ten presses) - only one thirty-sixth part of the total estimated value of the press and its effects.

In addition to these more or less permanent items there were others that had to be regularly renewed: linen and parchment for the tympans and friskets; wool for filling the ink balls, and leather for covering them. These purchases were also carefully recorded in the years 1563 to 1567 and the accounts are therefore valuable and informative on this aspect too.

Entries of purchases of linen do not occur very often2. as it presumably lasted for some considerable time. The same was not true of the parchment with which the friskets and the inner tympans were covered. In the case of the former, a new skin of parchment had to be cut for each forme, or, more precisely, for the formes of each new book. Between 1563 and 1566 Plantin bought eleven new sheets for the tympans (at 4, 5 and 6 st. each) and 208 pounds of old parchment for the friskets (at 2, 2¾ and 3¼ st. per pound), making 34 fl. 14¾ st. altogether.3. In the inventories of 1658 and 1662 compiled by

Balthasar ii Moretus the stock of parchment for friskets and tympans was valued at 1,980 fl.1. As the accounts for 1563-67 show, however, the amount used up per year did not represent an exorbitant expense. Nor did the wool for the ink balls: 39 pounds were purchased between 1563 and 1567 for a total cost of 6 fl. 19¾ st.2.

What did cost a lot of money was the leather required for the ink balls. In the memorandum of c. 1760 ‘concerning various things needed in the press’3. exact figures are given of consumption per unit. From one skin of leather 8 or 9 pieces large enough to cover an ink ball could be cut. Thirty-three skins per press per year were used, a total of 264 per year for the eight presses then in use. Each skin cost 12 st. and 264 times this amount made 158 fl. 8 st. Having them sewn cost 6 st. per dozen.

In the accounts for 1563-67 only the inclusive costs were entered. These were also considerable: between October 1563 and 28th August 1567 no less than 1290 skins were noted, costing altogether 328 fl. 15 st.4.

On 30th June 1565, an amount of 8 fl. was entered as the price of ‘8 weeks of assembling and stitching the leathers’. This means that in only four years Plantin spent as much on leather for ink balls as on purchases of new presses. During the 34 years of his career as a printer his expenditure on this leather must have been at least three times as great as that on the complete furnishing and equipping of his officina, including the presses and their appurtenances.

The amount of money spent on lighting was not less considerable. Between 31st December 1563 and 19th January 1567, as many as 129 stenen of candles were bought. (The steen, a weight then in use in the Southern Netherlands, was lighter than the present English stone; it weighed 4.719 kg or 10 lb. 6 oz.). At 17 and 18 st. a steen these purchases of candles came to 118 fl. 3 st.1.

The printing shop and other rooms had to be heated in the winter, and there had to be a fire for warming the lye all the year round. The memorandum of c. 1760 already referred to contained a ‘note or

estimate of the amount of English coal slack needed each year for the printing office’:1.

The note concludes: ‘In 1738, 300 quarters were purchased at 26½ st. a quarter, which came to 397 fl. 10 st. and in 1739, 130 quarters at 22¼ - st. a quarter, 167 fl. 1½ - st. altogether.’ It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the use of coal as fuel was recorded in the Plantinian accounts.2. Before this wood and charcoal had been employed. This means that the relative amount and cost of fuel used in Plantin's time must have been higher than the above figures. The accounts for 1563 to 1567, however, give only negligible sums for this item,3. and these must represent no more than a fraction of the actual expenditure. There is written evidence from 1639 which would seem to imply that it had formerly been the custom for the cost of heating the printing office to be borne by the workmen themselves.4. Another reference shows that in the time of Plantin this expense was met with

money from the quarterly bonus that the master paid per working press.1. Whether this was always the case, or whether the master made a regular contribution towards the heating cost is another question, but whatever the exact arrangement may have been, it is most unlikely that the men would have had to pay for heating the lye. The absence of entries of wood and charcoal purchases in the period 1563-67 is to be explained in another way. This was the time of the partnership with the Van Bomberghen family. Fuel costs were included in the sum of 50 fl. that Plantin received each year during that period to cover miscellaneous small items - heating and lye were mentioned specifically in the contract.2. An average of 50 fl. per year for the whole of Plantin's career, however, makes the cost of these menutez, as they were termed, also considerably higher than that of equipping the press.