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Watermark
Traditional watermarks (also called wire-marks, line-marks or wire-profiles) are made by sewing or tying fine metal wires to the wire cover of a paper mould in the shape of specific designs. As the sheet is formed less paper pulp is deposited on the raised wires. Thus in the fully formed sheet, the paper is thinner and more translucent in the area of the wire design, and this pattern is visible when illuminated from behind.
The origin of the watermark is uncertain. Initially watermarks may have been used to indicate information such as sheet size and the quality of the batch of paper. Early on watermarks evolved into the papermaker's personal trademark or, more often, a symbol that designated a specific paper mill. There are several categories of watermarks: simple designs such as crosses and circles, and more complex designs including human symbols, vegetation and animals.
The study of watermarks is called filigranology. Watermarks can sometimes yield valuable information about the date or origin for a work of art on paper. Numerous watermark catalogues with reproduced drawings of watermarks exist to facilitate this type of research. The most famous watermark dictionary, C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes, published in four volumes in Geneva in 1907, documents watermarks up to 1600. Dates are assigned to watermarks on the basis of exact correspondence with watermarks in dated documents. Watermark reference books are widely referred to by paper historians and print and drawing specialists. However the various ways in which paper moved among different countries and the uncertain interval between manufacture and use necessitates qualification and caution when assigning dates and origins to works of art based on watermark evidence. For example, a watermark on a print only tells us with certainty that it could not have been made before the date of the watermark. (And even this needs qualification since there are extremely sophisticated ways to fake watermarks often for the purpose of making a work of art appear to be something that it is not!) The ability to group impressions and establish chronology among different impressions of the same print according to watermark evidence is proving of great value to print historians. (Bibliography: see Hind and Griffiths)
To appreciate how difficult it is to identify a particular watermark in a pre-1600 paper here are some numbers: Briquet collected some 60,000 watermarks of an estimated 250,000 already in existence prior to 1600. Of these 60,000 he published approximately 16,000. From these numbers researchers have calculated that the odds are no more than 5 percent at finding an identical match of a particular watermark using a facsimile recorded in Briquet. (Bibliography: Mosser) |
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