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

Published Watermark Collections
and the World Wide Web
The watermark collections that have been made available
on the internet in the last few years already provide an indispensable
aid for the dating of documents written on paper
and also (to a lesser degree) for determining their provenance.
Nevertheless, the value of published watermark
collections has not diminished. The most important of these
are the seventeen “Findbücher” of Piccard (see V 10) and
Briquet’s “Les Filigranes” (see V 4). At the Austrian Academy
of Sciences, the Kommission für Schrift- und Buchwesen
des Mittelalters plans to make also these collections
available for research on the internet. The preliminary work
of preparing the texts in the Piccard and Briquet collections
for the internet has been undertaken in the framework of
the EU project Bernstein, based on data provided by the
project’s partner, the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale
de Paris (LAMOP).
It is planned to augment the online version of “Les Filigranes”
in two ways: On one hand, the older collections
that are most frequently cited by Briquet (cf. Les Filigranes,
p. VIII-X) will also be put on the internet and linked to the
respective Briquet numbers. Briquet integrated into his collection
several thousand watermarks that were already published
at the time of his work. Some he reproduced (cf., for
instance, Briquet No. 452 = Likhachev 3493f.), but more
often he simply listed them as variants of the depicted watermark
(cf., for example, Briquet Nr. 7, which mentions
Keinz No. 365 and Briquet 600, and refers to Likhachev
Nos. 154–156). It is planned, in addition, to link images of
the variants (listed by Briquet but not reproduced) that he
had collected and traced himself to each watermark in the
“Les Filigranes” collection. These variants are found in his
estate. They will gradually be made available on the internet
site of the Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive (see V 4).
Another pressing need is to compare and then link the
samples in the huge Piccard-Online collection, a total of
92,000 watermarks (see V 10), to the watermarks Piccard
published in his registers. About 44,500 of the watermarks
published in registers 3 to 17 correspond with regard to
motif to ca. 40,000 watermarks in Piccard-Online. It is clear
that linking the identical watermarks in the two resources
will be of immeasurable help to the user.
A single categorization system that is valid for all watermark
collections is a prerequisite for being able to search
efficiently and comprehensively for individual watermarks of
VI Digitalization of watermarks
a particular motif. In the framework of the Bernstein project,
the partners have agreed on designations for the main
groups. It is only a longer term goal, however, for a general
standardized system to be created for all watermarks of the
Middle Ages and the early modern period.
Literature: Internationale Bibliographie zur Papiergeschichte
(IBP), Abschnitt 8. Wasserzeichenkunde (vol. 2, 1018–
1085), in particular 8.1.1. Wasserzeichen-Alben (Vol. 2,
1018–1022); Verzeichnis der Wasserzeichen-Repertorien
(published and online) with watermarks primarily from the
Middle Ages: http://www.ksbm.oeaw.ac.at/wz/lit/rep.htm
Piccard-Online
A.H. (C.P.-K.)
Piccard-Online (available at www.piccard-online.de) contains,
adapted for the internet, the entire Piccard Index of
the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (Bestand J 340). In addition
to the watermarks found in the seventeen registers of watermark
types that were published by Piccard, his watermark
index also includes watermarks that were not published.
The digitalization project began by ordering, classifying,
and digitalizing these unpublished examples. It was
possible to form eighteen new groups in addition to those
of Piccard’s original classification. A second project, sponsored
by the German Research Foundation (DFG), digitized
most of the remaining samples in the watermark index and
integrated them into the newly established structure. Piccard
was very systematic throughout his many years of
work: Each watermark is drawn on a standardized index
card, and their position with respect to the laid lines has
been portrayed. Each card also includes basic related data,
such as the sample’s provenance (i.e. its location and signature),
the date and provenance of the manuscript (i.e. a
date or place mentioned in the manuscript itself), in some
cases the scribe or author of the text, as well as other comments.
This data has been entered into an MS-Access database,
which is now available for online research.
Piccard-Online is primarily based, however, on a visual
presentation of the watermarks, just as conceived by Piccard
in his publications. His registers make it possible to do
research on watermarks with almost no knowledge of technical
vocabulary or heraldry terminology. Each register be-
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