Aankondiging van een inboedelveiling te Ankeveen, 1839 before 1839

This is an announcement for a household auction in Ankeveen, near Amsterdam, printed in 1839. It was made using letterpress, a printing technique where raised, inked type is pressed onto paper. The process involved typesetting each word and line, inverting the letters and spacing, locking it into a frame, and then printing multiple copies. Look closely, and you can see how some of the letters are not perfectly aligned, and the pressure of the press is not uniform, revealing the handwork involved in this form of mass production. What I find compelling is the implied social context: this broadside speaks of the movement of goods – jewelry, porcelain, furniture, books – from one home to another. It is an explicit connection between production, consumption, and the cycle of life. Even in this simple, functional printed object, we see the complex relationships between labor, materials, and the marketplace that define our world.