The art of printing with movable metal type originated in Europe in the 1450s. Compared to medieval manuscript production, the printing technique required a variety of staff and costly investments. Like many other crafts and trades in the late Middle Ages, printing offices were organized as family businesses, where women were an important, but often anonymous and unpaid, part of the work force. Printers were in general organized in guilds, which excluded women, although widows could enjoy certain privileges. Widows of printers often took over their late husbands’ printing business and may be mentioned as printers in colophons, title pages, or legal records. If the widow remarried another printer, he would take control over the printing house. Some women are also mentioned as typesetters and proofreaders, or as commissioners of printed books. Notable women printers in early print culture are, for example, Anna Rügerin and Kunigunde Hergotin (Germany), Yolande Bonhomme and Charlotte Guillard (France), the Jewish printer Estellina Conat (Italy), Anna Fabri (Sweden), and Elizabeth Pickering (England). Of these, Estellina Conat and Kunigunde Hergotin stand out, since they were active as printers as married women, not as widows.