Uncut Sheets & Deluxe Bound 17th-c. Plantin-Moretus Psalter, 1683
Several years ago, the libraries at Johns Hopkins University acquired an intriguing example of uncut, unbound sheets for a small octavo imprint by one of the most storied European printing houses of the 17th century: the Platin-Moretus press of Antwerp. More recently, the very same imprint appeared in the antiquarian book market in handsomely bound octavo form, numbering some 600 pages in length (i.e., 25 sheets, 24 sheets containing 24 separate pages in the uncut version, plus a half-sheet).
The imperfect and, indeed, unfinished quality of the unbound sheets illuminates much of the printing and publishing process of early modern books. While some printing houses also had binding capabilities, many books were printed in one workshop and bound in another. Part of the binding process required folding and trimming the sheets to be bound. These pages therefore offer extraordinary insight into the “book-in-process,” allowing the viewer intimately to inspect the condition of the pages as issued from the printing press—uncut, unsewn, and unbound—while also raising interesting questions about possible readership and conditions of warehousing, sales, and circulation (or the lack thereof).
Extraordinarily, the accompanying bound copy is unique as well, augmented by an early owner with four additional pages containing Latin prayers in manuscript. Since each of these scribal additions terminates with the phrase “Requiescant in pace. Amen,” it seems likely the volume had been customized and specially bound for use by a Catholic priest for the liturgical administration of offices for the dead. This theory is further suggested by the fact that all four manuscript leaves are marked for ready reference with simple vellum tabs pasted down to the fore edges of the preceding pages. Thus, between these two impressions from the same 1683 setting of type, we may observe the history of this book from both ends of the life cycle—quite literally, from the cradle to the grave.
Both imprints from the Plantin-Moretus press in Antwerp bear its tell-tale printer’s device, which features a heavenly floating hand in motion, tracing a circle with a golden compass. The banderole above bearing the press’s motto, Labore et constantia (labor and constancy) describes the contrasting conditions of the legs of the compass as they combine to create a perfect, eternal circle. The Plantin-Moretus press was one of the most prolific and longest-lived of the early modern period (1555–1876), whose original building survives today as the world’s single greatest museum and research archive dedicated to early modern print culture.
—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens
Plantin stained–glass window, Hutzler Reading Room, Gilman Hall, JHU
Bibliography
Goran Proot, Yann Sordet, and Christophe Vellet (eds.), Un siècle d’excellence typographique: Christophe Plantin & son officine (1555–1655) / A Century of Typographical Excellence: Christophe Plantin & the Officina Plantiniana (1555–1655) (Paris: Bibliothèque Mazarine, Cultura Fonds Library, and Éditions des Cendres, 2020); Earle Havens, Renaissance Printers’ Devices: Essays on the Early Art of Printing & the King Memorial Windows of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore: Sheridan Libraries, 2015), 58–61; Dirk Imhof (ed.), De boekillustratie ten tijde van de Moretussen (Antwerp: Museum Plantin-Moretus, 1996); Marcus de Scheppet and Francine de Neve (eds.), Ex Officina Plantiniana Moretorum. Studies over het Drukkersgeslacht Moretus, De Gulden Passer 74 (1996), special issue; Jan Materné, “Restructuring the Plantinian Office: The Moretuses and the Antwerp Economy in a Time of Transition (Seventeenth Century),” in Erik Aerts et al. (eds.), Studia Oeconomica. Liber almnorum Herman van der Wee (Louvain, 1993), 283–301; Francine de Nave, “The Golden Compasses under the Moretus Family (1 July 1589–20 April 1876),” in de Nave and Leon Voet, Plantin-Moretus Museum (Antwerp, 1989), 30–53; Leon Voet, The Golden Compasses: A History and Evaluation of the Printing and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp (Amsterdam: Vangendt, 1969–72).
