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