library: Museum Plantin-Moretus

Coronelle Romaine, matrices

These are matrices---the pieces of copper that are the molds used to produce pieces of type---used for the typeface Coronelle Romaine. If you zoom in, you can see the nicks at the bottom of the matrices used to orient them in the mold and the individual letter forms, as well as ligatures (joined letters), numbers, and assorted other characters. Stamps made to illustrate this typeface can be seen here.

Coronelle Romaine, stamps

These stamps illustrate the forms of individual sorts of the typeface Coronelle Romaine, designed by Hendrik van den Keere in the early 1570s. You can see the matrices for casting these sorts here.

Coronelle Romaine, unjustified matrices

These matrices have not yet been justified: they've been struck with the various letterforms and glyphs, but the resulting pieces of copper haven't been made uniform and ready to use. If you compare these matrices with the finished ones, you can easily see the difference.

woodblock, Agrostemma githago (recto)

This woodblock was used to print illustrations of the corn-cockle in a long list of herbals, starting with its appearance in Rembert Dodoens's 1568 Florum and continuing through the 17th century. The Museum Plantin-Moretus's catalog record for the block lists books in which it appears, a few of which appear on this site and can be found by searching for

woodblock, Agrostemma githago (verso)

At some point in its history as part of the Plantin Moretus press, a paper label was affixed to the back of this woodblock in order to identify it.