Zoo mans als vrouwen-werk - Glenisson & Zonen

A nineteenth-century educational woodcut print by Glenisson & Zonen, depicting sixteen distinct trades and crafts through illustrated vignettes and Dutch verse.

This hand-coloured woodcut print, produced by the Belgian firm Glenisson & Zonen, belongs to the tradition of nineteenth-century educational broadsheets. These prints were designed to instruct children on the various trades and professions of the era, offering a visual catalogue of social and economic life. The composition is structured as a grid of sixteen individual vignettes, each depicting a specific craft or shop, ranging from bookbinding and chocolate making to lace production and tailoring.

The aesthetic is characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century popular imagery, featuring bold, simplified outlines and a limited, applied colour palette. The woodcut technique results in a graphic, direct quality, where the focus remains on the clarity of the action rather than atmospheric depth. Each scene is accompanied by a short verse in Dutch, which provides context for the activity shown, reinforcing the didactic purpose of the work. The figures are depicted in period-appropriate attire, providing a glimpse into the domestic and commercial environments of the time.

Glenisson & Zonen were active in Turnhout, a centre for the production of popular prints and children's literature in the nineteenth century. Their work often utilised recycled woodblocks or standardised formats to reach a broad audience. This particular sheet serves as a record of the division of labour and the variety of occupations available in a pre-industrial or early industrial society. The print is a document of social history, capturing the daily routines of artisans and shopkeepers through a lens intended for the moral and practical education of the young. The hand-colouring, applied with varying degrees of precision, adds a tactile quality to the printed lines, typical of the mass-produced ephemera of the period.