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

documents concerning land surveying. He grew enthusiastic
about research on watermarks and started to study the theoretical
aspects of the field, especially its use for dating and
assessing the provenance of 15th century manuscripts and
incunabula. By applying research on watermarks to his
studies of very early German incunabula, he increased the
accuracy of his dating and was able to ascribe his objects of
study to certain printers. His publications on the Missale
Speciale and Catholicon have become well known.
Gerardy compiled a huge collection of watermark images,
which he took from documents in German archives
by means of tracing, photography and beta radiography. He
supplemented this collection with watermarks taken from
reference books such as Briquet’s “Les Filigranes”. The core
of his collection is made up of watermarks from 15th century
German documents. Consequently, most of the watermarks
in his collection are of the “Bull’s head” motif, which
was frequently used in Germany.
Gerardy collected almost 15,000 images of watermarks.
Each watermark image also includes additional information,
such as its source, the institution holding the document it
was taken from, and whether it was copied from the
‘screen’ or ‘felt’ side of the paper. When making tracings,
he also included the chain lines as well as other details.
It was Gerardy’s wish that his collection be kept together
after his death and be sold to an institution that was interested
in paper and its history. He favoured the Koninklijke
Bibliotheek in The Hague because of his friendship with
Hendrik Voorn, at that time curator of the library’s historical
paper collection. Moreover, he had earlier sold 2,000 watermarks
taken from 18th and 19th century documents to the
same library. For this reason, in 1987 the Association of
Friends of the KB bought the Gerardy collection from his
heirs. The Friends presented the collection to the KB, where
it has found a perfect home, complementing the watermark
research on Dutch incunabula that was begun by Gerard
van Thienen, former curator of the KB.
* * *
Severin Corsten: Theo Gerardy, in: Lexikon des Buchwesens, Bd. III,
Stuttgart 1989–1991, p. 138.
Albert J. Elen: Die Wasserzeichensammlung Dr. Ing. Theo Gerardy,
in: IPH-Information 22 (1988), p. 160–165.
Theodor Gerardy: Zur Methodik der Wasserzeichenforschung, in:
Papiergeschichte 6 (1956) 2, p. 14–20.
Theodor Gerardy: Die Wasserzeichen des mit Gutenbergs kleiner
Psaltertype gedruckten Missale Speciale, in: Papiergeschichte 10
(1960) 2, p. 13–22.
Theodor Gerardy: Datieren mit der Hilfe von Wasserzeichen:
beispielhaft dargestellt an der Gesamtproduktion der schaumburgischen
Papiermühle Arensburg von 1604–1650. Bückeburg 1964.
Theodor Gerardy: Die Wasserzeichensammlung: der Aufbau einer Wasserzeichensammlung,
in: Papiergeschichte 15 (1965) 1–2, p. 7–14.
Theodor Gerardy: Wann wurde das Catholicon mit der Schluss-
Schrift von 1460 (GW 3182) wirklich gedruckt, in: Gutenberg-
Jahrbuch (1973) p. 105–125.
Theodor Gerardy: Zur Methodik des Datierens von Frühdrucken mit
Hilfe des Papiers, in: Ars impressoria: Entstehung und Entwicklung
des Buchdrucks: eine internationale Festgabe für Severin Corsten
zum 65. Geburtstag. Munich1986, S. 47–64.
M.v.D. (M.v.D. / C.P.-K.)
V 10 Gerhard Piccard
V 10 Gerhard Piccard
* 1909, artist and watermark scholar, 1961–1997 publication
of seventeen “Findbücher” of watermark motifs based
on his index of watermarks at the Hauptstaatsarchiv
Stuttgart, important publications on watermark research as
a historical aid, † 1989.
The largest collection of watermarks world-wide was put
together by Gerhard Piccard; his watermark index in the
Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart contains approximately 92,000
samples. According to his own estimate, he made tracings
of another 30,000 watermarks that were not transferred to
index cards. Piccard published seventeen volumes of ‘Findbücher’,
which include 4,540 different watermark types
and 44,497 individual signs. Until recently more than half of
his collection was still only available on cards in the Hauptstaatsarchiv
Stuttgart (Bestand J 340). In the meantime, Piccard’s
entire collection of watermarks has been made available
on the internet (http://www.piccard-online.de).
The first volumes of the registers (‘Krone’, ‘Ochsenkopf’
and for the most part also ‘Turm’) served merely as search
aids and presented only watermark types, but the later volumes
also included examples of individual watermarks.
However, the watermarks reproduced in the card index and
the published samples do not correspond exactly. In most
cases the registers contain more examples, since Piccard did
not transfer all of his tracings onto cards. In some registers,
however, here are also instances of there being fewer examples,
because he later collected many watermarks to
supplement those he had published.
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