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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Watermark Terminology<br />
In some way, the “<strong>Bernstein</strong> <strong>Project</strong>” is reminiscent of the<br />
Tower of Babel. At the end of the failed project in the Old<br />
Testament, the building of the tower succumbed to the<br />
confusion of languages. In the “<strong>Bernstein</strong> <strong>Project</strong>”, the language<br />
confusion is at the beginning, since the various project<br />
partners have, with their watermark collections, each<br />
brought their own terminology to the project. <strong>The</strong> large<br />
number of different watermark forms is reflected in the<br />
wide variations in the terminology used to describe them;<br />
moreover, the collections are often based on completely different<br />
classification systems.<br />
When integrating the different watermark collections, as<br />
the <strong>Bernstein</strong>-Portal plans to do, settling such terminological<br />
differences plays an important role. <strong>The</strong> confusion of<br />
languages, to pick up our opening metaphor again, must<br />
be eliminated in order to create a solid foundation. Watermarks<br />
with the same motif <strong>and</strong> the same characteristics<br />
must be described with the same terms if research in a<br />
common database is to be possible. For such an integrated<br />
database, the terminology being used is an important operator.<br />
<strong>The</strong> main goal in forming a unified terminology is, in the<br />
end, to have st<strong>and</strong>ardized descriptions for watermarks, descriptions<br />
that can also be used in the future to record newly<br />
discovered watermarks <strong>and</strong> integrate them into the <strong>Bernstein</strong>-Portal.<br />
An important step towards a general descriptive st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
as foreseen by the “<strong>Bernstein</strong> <strong>Project</strong>” is a comparison of<br />
the terminology used by the large watermark collections<br />
that already exist: Piccard-Online, WILC, <strong>and</strong> WZMA. A<br />
comparison of this sort was already conducted between<br />
Piccard-Online <strong>and</strong> WZMA a number of years ago; in order<br />
to realize the planned integration of WILC into the <strong>Bernstein</strong>-Portal,<br />
it was also necessary to compare its various<br />
motif groups to those of Piccard-Online. A short sketch of<br />
the process will illuminate what sort of difficulties this presented.<br />
First, for each motif group of the WILC a corresponding<br />
motif was sought in Piccard-Online. Of the approximately<br />
540 motif groups (descriptions), in nearly 70% of<br />
the cases it was possible to correlate WILC with Piccard-Online.<br />
<strong>The</strong> main criterion that was applied was the motifs being<br />
identical, which disregarded terminological differences.<br />
For this large group of hits, it was necessary to unify the<br />
terminology. <strong>The</strong> following description shows a few samples<br />
of such inconsistent terminology.<br />
108<br />
Piccard-Online WILC<br />
four-leaved four-petalled<br />
cloverleaf trifoliate trefoil<br />
conch shell<br />
straight orientated horizontal<br />
star with eight rays eight-pointed<br />
In many cases a common terminology could be found; it<br />
was more difficult when there were fundamental differences<br />
between the databases. <strong>The</strong> various names used for<br />
heraldry is one example. In Piccard-Online, the expression<br />
“coat of arms” is used, whereas the WILC uses the term<br />
“shield”. Since a change would have affected several thous<strong>and</strong><br />
entries, a compromise was reached in which a unified<br />
terminology (“coat of arms”) is only used at the first level.<br />
Steps in unifying the watermark terminology has already<br />
left its mark in scholarly research, as can be seen in an article<br />
by Carmen Kämmer on “city coats of arms” in Piccard-<br />
Online.<br />
How complex such terminological problems can be has<br />
been shown by Nigel Palmer, who uses the example of the<br />
motif names “Vierfüßer” <strong>and</strong> “Vielfüßer”. And indeed,<br />
Palmer’s observations were not unique, as work on the <strong>The</strong>saurus<br />
has shown. Piccard categorizes a long list of animals<br />
under the motif “Vierfüßer”, including not only deer, bear,<br />
lion, donkey, horse, but also monkey <strong>and</strong> rabbit, as well as<br />
the Christian symbol of the Easter lamb. Additional confusion<br />
is caused by the fact that the printed version of Piccard<br />
(Findbuch Vol. 15) speaks of “Vierfüsslern”, whereas Piccard-Online<br />
uses the homonym “Vierfüßer”. In the English<br />
version of Piccard-Online, this has been translated as “tetrapod”,<br />
a word that is not found, however, in st<strong>and</strong>ard dictionaries.<br />
In English, the prefix “tetra” (four) is used only in<br />
chemical or mathematical compounds. In the <strong>The</strong>saurus,<br />
the term “quadruped” has been used. As a consequence,<br />
the term in Piccard-Online has had to be changed.<br />
Still trickier is “Vielfüßer”, which in Piccard-Online has<br />
been defined as a new motif. <strong>The</strong> main watermark motifs<br />
in this group are crabs, scorpions, <strong>and</strong> spiders, that is, creatures<br />
with several legs. When looking for an English translation<br />
for this classification term, in st<strong>and</strong>ard dictionaries one<br />
finds “multiped”, “multipede” <strong>and</strong> “polypod”. If one does<br />
not want to fall back on an expression like “animal with<br />
more than four legs”, a more intensive search for a suitable<br />
word is needed, since only older editions of the Langenscheidt<br />
dictionary clearly refer to “polypod” as a zoological<br />
term. “Multiped” was chosen for the English version of Piccard-Online,<br />
the latest version of the <strong>The</strong>saurus now offers<br />
“polypod”; also here a new up-date in Piccard-Online<br />
should be taken into consideration.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se examples also show that the <strong>The</strong>saurus is not a finished<br />
dictionary, but rather can only be seen as a “work in<br />
progress” that is constantly undergoing improvements <strong>and</strong><br />
checks. Continual editorial supervision will therefore be<br />
needed.<br />
<strong>The</strong> relevance of editorial supervision is also apparent if<br />
looking at the newly developed component model within<br />
the <strong>Bernstein</strong>-Portal. <strong>The</strong> various project collaborators have<br />
already put the planned research module through an intensive<br />
test phase, using selected watermarks of the bull’s<br />
head motif. In the process, a series of terminological problems<br />
appeared that still need to be resolved. Both coordination<br />
in terminological discrepancies <strong>and</strong> the incorporation<br />
of new terms into the <strong>The</strong>saurus need to be undertaken in<br />
this regard. <strong>The</strong> sample in the following table gives an impression<br />
of this sort of problem.