Notificatie van de uitloting Gerechtshof van Utrecht op 7 augustus 1804 1804 - 1807

This announcement was printed in Utrecht on July 6th, 1804, by Johannes Altheer and Gerrit Post. It's a broadside, meaning it was printed on one side of a large sheet of paper. The texture of the paper is rough and aged. The announcement was produced using letterpress printing, a process where raised, inked type is pressed onto paper. This would have been a laborious process, involving typesetting, inking, and manual pressing. Look closely and you can see the slight unevenness of the inking, a telltale sign of this hand-operated technique. Broadsides like this were the mass media of their time, and this announcement is a notification regarding the selection of court officials. It embodies the transition to a print-based culture, where information could be widely disseminated, though still reliant on artisanal skill. The labor involved in producing it speaks to the value placed on disseminating official information, making it a vital artifact of its time.