Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
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Introduction<br />
When dealing with paper one deals with watermarks. From<br />
the beginning of paper production in Europe, probably as<br />
long ago as the twelfth century, watermarks have been<br />
used to indicate a paper’s origin or quality. <strong>The</strong>y indicate the<br />
town <strong>and</strong> the factory, or at first the paper mill, where the<br />
paper was made. In modern terms, one might speak of watermarks<br />
quasi as “labels”, as a designation of origin or certification<br />
of quality. However, watermarks are not immediately<br />
visible, but only when paper is held up to light.<br />
<strong>The</strong> best known contemporary use of watermarks is in<br />
paper currency. When backlit, the new Euro banknotes<br />
have a watermark that is visible from both sides in the area<br />
that is not printed. <strong>The</strong> bill’s architectural motif <strong>and</strong> its value<br />
can be seen. As has always been the case, the watermark is<br />
generated directly during the production of the paper<br />
through variations in the paper’s thickness. It serves here –<br />
as for bank notes in general – primarily as proof of the bill’s<br />
authenticity <strong>and</strong> to safeguard against counterfeiting.<br />
In the Middle Ages watermarks were typical in the production<br />
of paper. <strong>The</strong>y have been preserved for the most<br />
part in the paper manuscripts, prints <strong>and</strong> drawings that are<br />
now held <strong>and</strong> displayed by libraries, archives <strong>and</strong> museums.<br />
After gradually replacing the more expensive parchment as<br />
a material to write on – which occurred in Central Europe in<br />
the fifteenth century, in the Mediterranean regions earlier,<br />
<strong>and</strong> in northern <strong>and</strong> eastern Europe later – paper has remained<br />
the most important carrier of writing until our time.<br />
Of course the way paper is made has changed considerably,<br />
especially since the nineteenth century <strong>and</strong> the development<br />
of machine production, <strong>and</strong> the importance of watermarks<br />
– with the exception of banknotes – has become<br />
largely negligible. And today, the importance of paper is<br />
gradually being reduced by the transformations in communication<br />
structures through electronic media. Electronic<br />
storage by means of various types of data carriers has already<br />
replaced much printing on paper, although its capacity<br />
for long-term “durability” cannot yet be foreseen.<br />
Paper from the Middle Ages, together with its watermarks,<br />
usually presents no conservation difficulties when<br />
stored professionally <strong>and</strong> h<strong>and</strong>led properly. Correspondingly,<br />
the study of paper <strong>and</strong> watermarks has a long tradition<br />
<strong>and</strong> has been undertaken in many places for centuries. Naturally,<br />
contemporaries were already aware of the use <strong>and</strong><br />
function of watermarks in the production of paper, as can<br />
be seen in the early treatise by Bartolus de Saxoferrato.<br />
I Watermarks of the Middle Ages<br />
<strong>The</strong> interest of modern paper historians <strong>and</strong> scholars doing<br />
research on manuscripts <strong>and</strong> incunabula who deal with<br />
watermarks centres primarily on the methodological possibilities<br />
that watermarks provide for dating, apart from the<br />
historical economic <strong>and</strong> technical aspects of paper production<br />
as well as its trade <strong>and</strong> distribution. <strong>The</strong> watermark collections<br />
<strong>and</strong> research of major scholars like Charles-Moïse<br />
Briquet <strong>and</strong> Gerhard Piccard have demonstrated the special<br />
value watermarks hold for dating undated manuscripts <strong>and</strong><br />
prints. As a rule, by comparing <strong>and</strong> finding identical watermarks,<br />
they can be accurately dated to within a few years.<br />
This is of particular scholarly importance especially for early<br />
examples from the fourteenth to sixteenth century. A prerequisite<br />
for dating by means of watermarks is, accordingly,<br />
a large number of dated watermarks. <strong>The</strong> watermark catalogues<br />
published by Briquet <strong>and</strong> Piccard were the first collections<br />
to provide such information. Numerous later watermark<br />
collections augment this material, <strong>and</strong> it is thus likely<br />
that now most watermarks of the Middle Ages have been<br />
recorded.<br />
In the last few years the large watermark collections have<br />
also been digitally recorded. <strong>The</strong> entire collection of Gerhard<br />
Piccard in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, with approximately<br />
92,000 samples of watermarks, is already available<br />
on the internet.<br />
It is also planned to fuse the large data banks WZMA (Vienna)<br />
<strong>and</strong> WILC (<strong>The</strong> Hague), which are currently the main<br />
sources for the European Union-funded project “<strong>Bernstein</strong><br />
– the memory of paper”, <strong>and</strong> to present them as a joint<br />
“watermark portal” on the internet. It is clear that common<br />
terminology in watermark nomenclature plays an important<br />
role here. As the use of many languages is m<strong>and</strong>atory for<br />
Ill. 1: Banknote with watermark<br />
9