Unknown artist after Jan van de Velde II (ca. 1593-1641) after Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), Boekdruckereye te Haerlem gevonden ontrent het Jaer 1440, no date [original 1628]. Collotype of etching. Graphic Arts GA2011- in process
Graphic Arts holds a collotype of Jan van de Velde’s etching after Saenredam’s illustration of a fifteenth-century print shop. This is one of seventeen prints, most drawn by Saenredam, for the 3rd edition of Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem… (Description and Praise of the City of Haarlem) (1628).
Three men are depicted including a compositor working in the back at the type cases, a printer in the foreground comparing two proof sheets, and barely visible behind him, another pressman operating the press.
British MuseumSaenredam and Velde created a second view of the same shop (at the left). This is meant to be the printing shop of Lourens Janszoon Coster (ca. 1370-ca. 1440), an early Dutch printer of incunables. The second print asserts that Coster was the inventor of printing in Europe, a claim that has long since been dropped.
See also: Douglas C. McMurtrie (1888-1944), The Dutch Claims to the Invention of Printing (Chicago, 1928). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) 2006-1281N
