[16th Century book printing shop]

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A printing shop from the 16th century is the subject here, and the record gives no date beyond the period, so the scene has to be read through its setting. Early presses of this era were slow, hand-operated machines, and a shop like this one would have included a compositor setting type letter by letter from a case, a pressman pulling the bar, and a corrector checking proofs before the sheets went out. Printing had spread across Europe only a few decades earlier, after Gutenberg's movable type, and by the 1500s workshops in cities such as Venice, Paris, Antwerp and Basel were turning out books in growing numbers. Notice how the workers, tools and crowded bench show the labor that lay behind each printed page.

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