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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AT8100-W211_11 AT8100-W211_13<br />
Piccard-Online Nr. 085729 (1361) AT8100-W211_11 / Piccard-Online Nr. 085729<br />
Ill. 8<br />
behind the choice of chancellery documents appears to be underst<strong>and</strong>able:<br />
since the early 1950s Piccard had been interested<br />
in the time period between the production of paper <strong>and</strong> its<br />
use, which he attempted to establish with the help of watermarks<br />
in chancellery records, since such offices were continually<br />
run <strong>and</strong> their records are clearly dated.<br />
Gerhard Piccard made direct pencil tracings, which, upon<br />
his return to Stuttgart in the winter months, he drew true<br />
to scale in black drawing ink onto st<strong>and</strong>ardized acid-free index<br />
cards by means of tracing, <strong>and</strong> filed them into his card<br />
index. Tracing watermarks with pencil onto transparent paper,<br />
a simple <strong>and</strong> inexpensive method, is still quite common.<br />
<strong>The</strong> tracing should only include what can actually be<br />
seen; what cannot be seen may not be added, even if the<br />
figure is then incomplete. According to his own records,<br />
Piccard made 130,000 such tracings, <strong>and</strong> in his collection,<br />
he refers to the exactitude of his depictions: “It can be taken<br />
as given that the watermarks have been drawn with the<br />
greatest precision possible. Any variances from the originals<br />
do not go beyond the limits of potential differences that occur<br />
because of ordinary pressure on the paper. Numerous<br />
comparisons have shown that occasionally, in the transfer<br />
onto the tracing paper or because the tracing or drawing<br />
was done twice, small differences from the original can be<br />
found. <strong>The</strong>se are within the limits of the normal “width of<br />
a line”, <strong>and</strong> thus it is possible to speak of copies that are<br />
true to the original.” (Piccard, Wasserzeichenkartei V, p. 9).<br />
<strong>The</strong>re have gradually begun to be reservations about the<br />
method of copying watermarks by tracing since much more<br />
accurate methods such as beta-radiography have been de-<br />
71