Watermarks

Watermarks in Incunabula in the Low Countries - watermerken in boeken gedrukt in de Nederlanden en Vlaanderen, 1460-1500.

Introduction No more than 800 of the 2000 or so fifteenth-century editions printed on paper in the Low Countries are dated. Alongside type and other bibliographical evidence, paper research is a method of arriving at a dating within a range of years rather than decades. Identification of paper stocks has long been hindered by inadequate reproduction of the watermarks used in them. But ways of reproducing them other than by tracing were developed in the second half of the twentieth century, methods such as photography, beta radiography, Dylux, low-voltage Röntgen radiation (as in WM I 00152), rubbings (as in WM I 00259) and electron radiography. The two methods here used for the Low Countries incunables are rubbings and electron radiography. Making rubbings is cheap and quick and does not damage the books. It can also be done everywhere, an essential advantage when almost 600 editions are found in unique copies in libraries across the world. Of the 2000 editions - with the exception of some 30 books, mostly short - there have been made more than 18,000 rubbings of watermarks in one or more copies of each. The best images of watermarks are made by beta radiography and electron radiography. Because of the slowness of beta radiography - a single image can take hours to capture - electron radiography is preferable. This method was developed almost twenty years ago by Schnitger, Ziesche and Mundry in Berlin and has been adopted in The Hague in cooperation with the Röntgen Technische Dienst (RTD) in Rotterdam. It is now possible to make 250 to 300 Röntgen negatives of watermarks from forty incunables in four hours in the basement of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The first electron radiographs of watermarks in Low Countries incunables were taken from more than 100 dated folio editions in the collection of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the total of dated incunables from the Low Countries in folio format is less than 200). To these have been added 22 dated and undated editions from the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague, one from the Koninklijk Huisarchief also in The Hague, one from the Librije in Zutphen and one from the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. There are also a few images of watermarks found in quartos by the Printer of the Freeska Landriucht (e.g., WM I 00081 - 00098); a disadvantage with quartos is that the watermark is in the fold of the sheet, so that part of the image, placed as it is on two leaves, is lost in the gutter of a bound volume. There are also some images of the watermarks in the two blockbooks (Apocalyps and Biblia pauperum) in the KB collection. The total of records is more than 16.000, almost all accompanied by images. Although the Access watermark database is still under construction and not all the different marks of the selected incunables are as yet in the database, it was decided to put them on the Internet as they stand at present since the material is already extensive and enables comment and suggestions on this Website and comparison with others. This presentation is also a plea for separate databases for watermarks of different periods, different areas and different materials: manuscripts, printed books, drawings, etchings, prints and maps. A unified worldwide database for all watermarks is a project for the future. Reproduction methods A selection of images illustrating the making of rubbings and electron radiographs. http://watermark.kb.nl/reproduction.html Explanations and notes on the website See also Help In the production of fifteenth-century paper two moulds were used, each with a similar but not identical watermark. Every paper stock is identified by a pair of watermarks, or "twins". The twin watermarks in the two moulds are usually in opposite halves of the moulds. The side of a sheet of paper that was in direct contact with the mould (and so with the wires and the watermarks) shows more relief than the other side (the "felt" side) of the sheet. For making rubbings the relief or "mould" side is better and for the same reason the electron radiographs show the mould side of the sheet. Looking at the mould side and placing the watermark in an upright position (only symmetrical watermarks such as star and sun cause problems here) it is possible to describe one of a pair as mark left, the watermark closest to the left short outer side of the sheet, or mark right, the watermark closest to the right short outer side of the sheet. By reproducing the mould side, it is possible with many types of watermarks to reduce the search results by three quarters; for instance, watermark letter p can be split into two groups by its position in the two moulds, mark left and mark right, and these two groups can again be split into mL p to right (reading direction), mL p to left (inverse) and mR p to right (reading direction) and mR p to left (inverse). For identification of watermarks and paper stocks four groups of 25 watermarks will be easier to handle than one of 100. The main descriptions or names of the watermarks are as in the English Typological Index in the 1968 edition of Briquet, the exception being that lily is preferred to fleur-de-lis. The 39 group names (from acorn to wheel, ending with a miscellaneous group) are to be found under Browse by main group, an arrangement easier to take in at a glance than the 200 or so main entries in the Briquet Index. The subgroups follow partly their own system: the larger the main group, the more subgroups will branch from it. The large main groups are bull, dog, hand, pot and the two main groups with the most records letter p and shield. In the last no heraldic terms have been used with the exception of bends, the direction of the bends being indicated by / or to differentiate further between subgroups. With the attached images the names given to the subgroups should be readily comprehensible. Some of the main groups hold now just as few records as the subgroups in miscellaneous, but from the existing documentation of the rubbings it is clear that there will be growth in these main groups but not in the miscellaneous subgroups. By passing with the mouse over the description of the subgroups images will pop up. Chainlines: the two digits denote the chainlines (counted from the outside of the sheet) between which the watermark is found. Tranchefiles and chainlines may have been cropped by the binder. The height of the watermarks is measured only in folio editions. The density of laid lines has been added since October 2003 as an extra parameter. Irregularities of the paper sheets and differences in thickness of the chainlines, the lines of the watermark itself and the density of laid lines render exact measurement of the distance between chainlines and height WM difficult. Searching with a margin of 1 mm on either side is recommended; this may be done by using between xx and xx. Mainclass IPH (International Association of Paper Historians). Notice has been taken of the International Standard for the registration of papers with or without watermarks, Typological Index, Version 2.0 (1997). Only the letters of IPH's main classes have been given. Its subclasses are inadequate for the differentiation of WILC's subgroups; for instance, IPH bull, 3 subclasses, WILC 23 subgroups, IPH dog, no subclass, WILC 18 subgroups, IPH letter p, 3 subclasses, WILC 52 subgroups. The main classes of IPH are:

For more information see the IPH website, www.paperhistory.org

The recording of Twins clearly shows the 'under construction' nature of the database. So far 1864 images register a twin, 932 pairs of marks.
This website is not intended as a gallery of unique watermark images but as a tool for the better dating of incunables. For that reason images of the same watermark in different editions are often given. These are called equivalents and are brought together in equivalents groups.

All places of printing and printers of the Low Countries are in the Indexes

With the incunables drawn upon for the watermarks, a distinction is made between a date of printing in the book itself, and a deduced date based on type, woodcut or paper evidence.

Under paper size the standard is Chancery, but there are also some watermarks from incunables printed on two other sheet sizes of the fifteenth century: Median and Royal; Imperial paper is not represented. The dimensions for these four sizes are: Imperial ca. 49 x 74 cm, Royal ca. 43 x 62 cm, Median ca. 35 x 51 cm and Chancery ca. 32 x 45 cm.

To identify the incunables, the imprint - place, printer, date - is given, and also the institution and the shelfmark of the copy used, followed by two bibliographical references: Incunabula printed in the Low Countries (ILC) and Campbell's Annales (CA, Camp), but there are no author/titles. There are many ways to find these: besides the printed reference books ILC and CA, there are ISTC (Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, the British Library database also available on CD-ROM as The Illustrated ISTC), by searching on the Campbell number, and the KB website: KB Catalogue Special collections, with a search on shelfmark.

Gerard van Thienen, September 2000.

Update (February 2007)

A link has been established between WILC and The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) (http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/)

Update (August 2004)

The number of images has increased to more than 16.000. The electron radiographs and rubbings are taken not only from dated books in folio format but also from smaller format incunables and from copies in more than 200 collections other than the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
Thanks to Vlad Atanasiu an extra parameter could be added: the Density of laid lines. See: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/atanasiuvlad/ad751/

Specifications

The watermark database was constructed with Microsoft Access 97. The connection between database and website is made with Active Server Pages (ASP). The website is run on Microsoft's Internet Information Server.

The electron radiographs of the watermarks were scanned at 600 dpi and saved in jpg format for the master images. The jpg images on de website have been compressed to 150 dpi.

Other watermark websites

• The memory of paper
• Piccard-Online
• WZMA - Wasserzeichen des Mittelalters
• Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence - International database of watermarks and paper used for prints and drawings c. 1450-1800
• WIES-Watermarks in Incunabula printed in España
• The WWW Watermark Archive Initiative
• A Digital Catalogue of Watermarks and Type Ornaments Used by William Stansby in the printing of The Workes of Beniamin Jonson
• Le filigrane degli archivi genovesi
• EVTEK Paper Identification Database
• The Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive

Bibliography

Watermark repertories

C.M. Briquet, Les filigranes. The new Briquet-Jubilee edition, edited by Allan Stevenson. Amsterdam 1968, 4 vols.

Gerhard Piccard, Die Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart. Stuttgart 1961-1997, Findbuch I-XVII, 25 Bnde.


Articles on watermarks in Low Countries incunabula

Gerard van Thienen, Die Datierung der Werke des 'Druckers mit dem Monogramm' (Utrecht 1479-1480) nach dem Papierverbrauch, in: Johannes Gutenberg - Regionale Aspekte des frühen Buchdrucks. Berlin 1993, pp. 193-202.

Gerard van Thienen, Papieronderzoek van de in de Nederlanden gedrukte incunabelen , in : Anton Gerits (ed.), For Bob de Graaf, antiquarian bookseller, publisher, bibliographer. Amsterdam 1992, pp. 160-173 (With references to the earlier literature on paper and watermark research of Low Countries incunables). Full version see: http://www.bibliopolis.nl

Gerard van Thienen, Boeken van papier en hun watermerken, in: Jos. M.M. Hermans and Klaas van der Hoek (ed.), Boeken in de late Middeleeuwen. Groningen 1992, pp. 167-182.

Gerard van Thienen, A date for the Freeska Landriucht press (1484-7) from paper evidence with a note on the Codex Roorda, in: Martin Davies (ed.), Incunabula, studies in fifteenth-century printed books presented to Lotte Hellinga. London 1999, pp. 141-167.

Elly Cockx-Indestege, Gerard van Thienen and Jean Gustin, Le Missale leodiense imprimé par Jean de Westphalie, in: Bulletin de la Société des Bibliophiles liégeois 23 Liège 1997, pp. 19-85.

Gerard van Thienen, Papieronderzoek en de drukpers van de Broeders des gemenen levens in Brussel (1475-1485), in: E Codicibus Impressisque, Opstellen voor Elly Cockx-Indestege. Leuven 2004, I, pp.431-454.

Gerard van Thienen, Papieronderzoek van de in de Nederlanden gedrukte incunabelen, zie www.kb.nl/watermark, in: Boek & letter, Boekwetenschappelijke bijdragen t.g.v. het afscheid van prof.dr. Frans A. Janssen als hoogleraar in de Boek-en bibliotheekgeschiedenis aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, red. Jos Biemans, Lisa Kuitert & Piet Verkruijsse. Amsterdam 2004, pp. 31-46.

Gerard van Thienen und Martine Veldhuizen, Watermarks in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries (WILC), An online illustrated database, in: Piccard-Online, Digitale Präsentationen von Wasserzeichen und ihre Nutzung. Hrsg. Peter Rückert, Jeannette Godeau, Gerald Maier. Stuttgart 2007, pp.65-69.

Paul Needham, IDL, ILC, WILC: Gerard van Thienen's contributions to the study of incunabula, in: Quaerendo 36,2006,pp.3-24. (With an extensive evaluation of WILC).


Other publications on watermarks

Dierk Schnitger, Eva Ziesche and Eberhard Mundry, Elektronenradiographie als Hilfsmittel für die Identifizierung schwer oder nicht erkennbarer Wasserzeichen, in: Gutenberg Jahrbuch 58.Mainz 1983, pp. 49-67.

Stephen Spector (ed.), Essays in Paper Analysis. Washington 1987.

Monique Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda avec la collaboration de Georges Korobelnik, Les papiers filigranés médiévaux. Essai de méthodologie descriptive. Vols I and II. Turnhout 1989, Bibliologia 7, 8.

Theo Laurentius, Harry M.M. van Hugten, Erik Hinterding and Jan Piet Filedt Kok, Het Amsterdamse onderzoek naar Rembrandts papier: radiografie van de watermerken in de etsen van Rembrandt, in: Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, veertigste jaargang. Amsterdam 1992, pp. 353-384.

Paul Needham, Allan H. Stevenson and the Bibliographical Uses of Paper, in: David L. Vander Meulen (ed.), Studies in Bibliography, Volume Forty-Seven. Virginia 1994, pp. 23-64.

Paul Needham, Res papirea: Sizes and Formats of the Late Medieval Book, in: Peter Rück (ed.), Rationalisierung der Buchherstellung im Mittelater und in der frühen Neuzeit, Ergebnisse eines buchgeschichtlichen Seminars Wolfenbüttel 12. - 14. November 1990. Marburg an der Lahn 1994, pp. 123-145.

Puzzles in Paper, Concepts in historical watermarks, ed. by Daniel W. Mosser, Michael Saffle & Ernest W. Sullivan.
New Castle, USA/London, 2000.

Martin Wittek, Inventaire des manuscrits de papier du XVe siècle conservés à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique et de leurs filigranes. Tome III: Manuscrits datés (1461-1480). Préf. Raphaël de Smedt. Bruxelles 2005, 2 T.
Wittek: Tome IV (1481-1500). Bruxelles 2006.


Bibliographical reference works

Gerard van Thienen & John Goldfinch, Incunabula printed in the Low Countries. A Census. Nieuwkoop 1999.

M.F.A.G. Campbell, Annales de la typographie Néerlandaise au XVe siècle. La Haye 1874, suppléments I-IV 1878-1890.

C.H.Kok, De houtsneden in de incunabelen van de lage landen, 1475-1500. Amsterdam 1994. 2 Vols.

Colophon

Paper and watermark research:
Gerard van Thienen, former curator of incunabula, KB Den Haag
Marjolein van Herten, Universiteit Nijmegen
Astrid Enderman, Universiteit Nijmegen
Aukje Eggenhuizen, Universiteit Nijmegen
Martine Veldhuizen, Universiteit Utrecht
Karin Bout, Universiteit Utrecht
Annette Gutjahr, Open Universiteit, Den Haag
Erik Jan Bleeker
Hans Punt, Universiteit Leiden

Production electronradiographs:
Röntgen Technische Dienst, Rotterdam:
Aad Kuiper
Guus Peeters

Scanning:
Department of optical technology, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag:
Wim Smit
Jaap van Dongen
Robert Gillesse
Thom Thijs
Peter Beugelsdijk
Francis Frionnet

Database construction:
Janneke van Kersen, Universiteit Leiden
Gerdien Schriek, Universiteit Leiden
Michel Koppelaar, Universiteit Leiden
Fons Reijsbergen, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag

Website:
Hennie Dolfsma, Universiteit Leiden
Fons Reijsbergen, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag
Marco de Niet, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag

With cooperation of:
Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, Den Haag
Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht
Stichting Librije Walburgskerk, Zutphen
Koninklijk Huisarchief, Den Haag

Travel grants:
1997, 1998, 1999
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)

Sponsors:
SNS Reaal Fonds, Amsterdam
Vereniging van Nederlandse Papier- en Kartonfabrieken (VNP)
Crown Van Gelder Papierfabrieken (CVG)
Norske Skog Parenco
Sappi Maastricht

INTAS Project:
Partner in a project for A Distributed Database and Processing System for Watermarks, with Academies of Science of Vienna, Moscow and St Petersburg and the State Historical Museum, Moscow. 2001- June 2004, supported by INTAS.

Bernstein Project:
Partner in the Bernstein project, in which an integrated European digital environment for the expertise and history of paper is created. This project is coordinated by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna; partners come from Paris, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Delft, Florence, Graz and Liverpool.

Questions and comments

Mail to: marieke.vandelft@kb.nl