Gezicht op het huis van Cornelis Ploeger in Jisp 1766

This print, titled "View of the house of Cornelis Ploeger in Jisp," was made by an anonymous artist. It's an etching, meaning the image was incised into a metal plate, likely copper, using acid. The lines you see are actually tiny grooves that would have held ink, transferred to the paper under great pressure by a printing press. Etchings like this were relatively easy to produce in multiples, making imagery more widely available. This print gives us a glimpse into the world of 18th-century Dutch commerce, because the inscription mentions that in this house, "the shooters were offered a rich display of weapons trading goods" in 1766. In this case, we see how the print medium could serve as a form of proto-advertising, connecting this house to a network of trade and consumption. It’s a reminder that even seemingly simple images can be deeply embedded in social and economic systems.