Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...

Ill. 2: Schematized rendering of a papermaking mould (based on Piccard)
Less paper pulp accumulates on the wires than in the free
spaces between them. Likewise, the paper is more transparent
where wire figures have been attached to the screen’s
grid to create a watermark. It was noted by Piccard that
strictly speaking two watermarks are produced when making
paper: on one hand he is referring to the prints of the
screen’s laid and chain-lines, which are a technical feature
as well as the main characteristic of handmade paper, and
on the other hand, the transparent forms created by the
deliberate fastening of wire figures to the screen, producing
watermarks (Piccard spoke of ’paper marks’) in the usual
sense of the word.
When the mould is lifted out of the watery paper pulp in
the dipping vat, the water flows off through suction and
the linen pulp (rag pulp) remains on the screen, forming a
new material: a piece of paper (Ill. 3). It contains the watermark
as well as a print of the chain-lines (warp wires), seen
in the warp lines, and the laid-lines (ribbing wires), seen in
the ribbed lines (Bannasch). Usually two workers are involved
in the process of making paper: One is the vatman,
who is responsible for dipping the mould into the vat filled
with water and fibre pulp (the ’slurry’) and who carefully
shakes the contents so that the pulp is spread evenly over
the screen. The other is the couchman, who then takes the
mould containing the paper pulp from the vatman. While
the vatman repeats the first step with a new screen, the
couchman lays a sheet of felt over the fibres in the mould
and couches the fibres on the screen onto a ready piece of
felt by turning the mould over. A second sheet of felt is laid
over the wet sheet of paper so that the next piece of paper
can be couched directly on top of it.
Thus, for reasons of efficiency, two screens were used to
work at one dipping vat, and consequently there were two
wire figures forming watermarks. Sheets of paper that were
made in this way therefore show two variants of a single
watermark, a watermark pair. It was possible for two workers
at one vat to make up to five thousand sheets of paper
during a twelve-hour workday (Jaffé). As soon as a taller
stack of fresh sheets of paper and the felt separating them
had piled up, this ’post’ was pressed. In this way the weight
could be reduced by nearly half. In a second pressing, after
the felt was removed and the correspondingly smaller post
of paper sheets was laid in the press, the dipping water
was pressed out nearly completely. The paper was then
brought to a drying attic to dry completely. There the sheets
were hung on lines with the help of a wooden cross. In a
final step, each sheet of paper was coated with a layer of
starch paste, smoothed out again and packed for transporting.
Tschudin has estimated that a mould had a work life of
maximum two years; larger moulds were considered more
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