Exactly 550 years ago, the first modest booklets were printed in the Belgian city of Aalst. To commemorate this anniversary, a Brussels museum will give visitors a rare chance to see the earliest printings.
On 8 and 9 December the KBR museum, located in the Royal Library near Central Station, will display 10 of the earliest printed books in Belgium, alongside the permanent selection of around 100 manuscripts.
"Never before has this exclusive selection of old prints been together in the same room: 10 of the 12 first editions in Belgium, plus an extremely rare precursor: a block book, which is printed from wood blocks," the museum announced on Friday.
Credit: KBR
Printed between 1473 and 1475, these editions from Aalst, Leuven, Bruges and Brussels will not be behind glass in showcases. Instead, they can be seen up close in exclusive viewings accompanied by KBR staff.
Prof. Dr Pierre Delsaerdt, professor of book history at the University of Antwerp and Academy member, and Dr Heleen Wyffels, project manager of early printed books at the Flemish Heritage Libraries guide visitors through the pioneering years of book printing in Belgium.
Printing in Belgium
These "exclusive" tours led by the KBR mark the 550th anniversary of the introduction of printing in Belgium.
In 1473, when the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold ruled over the regions where Belgium is now located, Dirk Martens and his German associate Johannes van Westfalen printed their first modest Latin books in Aalst. They had met in Italy and brought the necessary letters from there.
Shortly afterwards, van Westfalen left Aalst to settle in the university town of Leuven, where he published his first self-printed work in 1474: an agricultural manual. Soon after, there was a boom in the number of prints being made.
In the same year another printer, Johan Veldener, also set up shop in Leuven and made prints while almost simultaneously, William Caxton printed his first books in Bruges: the Trojeroman and a guide to chess, which were also the first books published in English in the world.
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Then, in the spring of 1475, the Brethren of the Common Life printed for the first time in Brussels: a comprehensive theological tract came off their presses.
All these works, which KBR said were "at the cradle of one of the greatest technological revolutions in the history of the world", will be on display on 8 and 9 December, from 10:00 to 17:00 (visitors have to choose a time slot). Tickets are now on sale on the museum's website.
