Women’s business/Businesswomen

Starting on Saturday 13 September, Museum Plantin-Moretus will be telling the stories of 300 years of women in the publishing house and family home. Versatile women who were indispensable and omnipresent in the family business, but who largely remained invisible to the public. Because without them, there was no Plantin & Moretus.

The exhibition tells the story of a number of women who, for nine generations, lived, worked and resided in the printer’s home on the Vrijdagmarkt. The printing house was a typical family business with enterprising businesswomen, devoted homemakers, active daughters, master printers, a multitude of employees, apprentices and domestic servants.

Family business

The first three male managers of Plantin’s printing and publishing house are particularly well known: founder Christopher Plantin, son-in-law Jan and grandson Balthazar Moretus. However, in the 16th to 19th centuries the printing trade was anything but a man's business. The Officina Plantiniana was a family business with master printers, apprentices, maids and workmen of all kinds. The traces of the women who lived and worked here are fainter and less well documented.

Of businesswomen and women’s business

The archives of the Museum Plantin-Moretus contain a treasure trove of letters, household journals and diaries that give us an insight into the lives of the women of this house. Their stories will retake their rightful place in the museum from September 13, 2025. Meet daughters who improved proofs and struck trade deals from an early age. Meet businesswomen who became company directors. Look over the shoulder of mothers who closely supervised their children's education.

In addition, we highlight in the Reading Cabinet the work of a female artist from the Print Cabinet: the Antwerp artist Maria Segers. Her sketches and watercolours capture fleeting moments in just a few sparse strokes: the leap of a dancer, the spontaneity of a child, or the magic of the circus.