Schools in early modern Europe were social spaces of learning and teaching, and above all, paper was present. A thread for #paperhistory and #bookhistory. What you see is an imagined schooling scene from the seventeenth century by Jan Steen.
Source: t1p.de/7e0x
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Source: t1p.de/7e0x
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Let's focus on the details.
It was not too uncommon to have paper broadsides or broadsheets glued to the walls. These printed upon paper products could be used for educational purposes too. The one in the painting seems to be carrying script, printed words. On paper.
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It was not too uncommon to have paper broadsides or broadsheets glued to the walls. These printed upon paper products could be used for educational purposes too. The one in the painting seems to be carrying script, printed words. On paper.
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In the upper right corner of the room we see the usual artifacts of the so-called book industry: a bound book, an unbound book, loose paper sheets in different formats, fresh and used papers. A learned setting and everyday business of dealing with paper and knowledge.
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En passant, if you fancy hornbooks, the painting of 1670 features two of them. I will show them in detail in the thread. Hornbooks often displayed letters of the alphabet and were a educational tool in earlymodern schools.
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As novice readers you were often trained with hornbooks, a form of an ABC book that consisted of a piece of parchment or paper pasted on a wooden board protected by a leaf of horn. Before you uncessarily wasted or damaged paper, you had to train with a hornbook.
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Learning to read was one thing, but writing practice became soon a paper practice. Pupils like the ones sitting at this table were writing - with feathers, with early graphite pencils - into a variety of reading booklets and blank ('empty') books: so-called ABC booklets.
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And where to buy all these paper products school kids needed? Well, it was the usual bookseller (plus a few more shop owners) providing all kinds of papers needed, from the ABC booklets to bound educational books to printed images. You see the variety under the table.
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Let's highlight the centered scene of the painting.
We see a female teacher advising a pupil to read correctly from a small paper book, very likely with a printed text. Also on the table: loose sheets needed for teaching, maybe to write on, maybe to read from.
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We see a female teacher advising a pupil to read correctly from a small paper book, very likely with a printed text. Also on the table: loose sheets needed for teaching, maybe to write on, maybe to read from.
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Wherever paper was used, waste paper could also be found. These pieces of a paper sheets give us a hint to the material life of hand-made paper in early modern Europe: it was produced, it was used, and it was recycled - often to fresh 'new' paper.
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Illustrated prints, made with a copperplate or a woodblock, on paper were often good-selling 'popular' products of the early modern printing industry. Some of these prints were serials, some were hand-colored after printing, and children came into contact with them.
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And there is always this one child in every class that needs more attention. Greetings to the boy dancing on the table with a big and bound book in his hand. Knowledge in motion in a classroom.
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All right, see you next time for the next painting. If you enjoyed this, maybe you like these 'paper in paintings' threads as well:
Bye.
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https://twitter.com/dbellingradt/status/1336325211856113666?s=20
https://twitter.com/dbellingradt/status/1326475134174187521?s=20
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https://twitter.com/dbellingradt/status/1272870879853191169?s=20
https://twitter.com/dbellingradt/status/1313134493042118661?s=20
Bye.
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