In the first place, there is no such thing
as a duplicate. Of course not. Can you print
two copies on the same paper? Then, so far as the paper
itself and the watermarks are subjects of enquiry,
"duplicates" may be astoundingly different.—Falconer Madan before the
Bibliographical Society (1911).[1]
MOST EARLY BOOKS ARE PRINTED ON A VARIETY of papers. They
contain a number of different watermarks. Though now and
then a small volume has "one mark throughout," and a tall
folio shows a single stock of fine paper, the majority of
books are not so consistent. Often a well-printed folio,
starting out with a run of grape paper (say), shifts to
crown or fleur-de-lis paper by the time it reaches its
second alphabet. In other folios, no less proud ones, the
preliminaries alone disclose several marks, and the text a
dozen or sixteen more, with alternation of marks through
successive sheets. And, as for quartos, the next play one
leafs through may offer an assortment of seven watermarks
within eleven sheets. Those who have examined the
papermarks in early books know these things are so.[2]
Indeed, mixed watermarks began with the Gutenberg Bible;[3] and they persisted through the
Renaissance into the eighteenth century, as a normal
feature of books printed on handmade paper. A volume
printed by Wynkyn de Worde, the Vitas
Patrum of 1495, is said to contain nearly
fifty different marks.[4]
There have been explanations. Sometimes (it has been said)
printers bought cheap job lots of paper.[5] Such an explanation neatly fits the
bibliographically famous Shakespearian quartos of 1619.
Sir Walter Greg showed, in 1908, that these nine quartos
contain at least twenty-seven watermarks, so distributed
as to prove all were printed in one year, though their
imprints read variously "1600," "1608," and "1619."[6] All printed by Jaggard for Pavier. In
examining four sets of these quartos, Greg found, to be
sure, just one pot watermark throughout the two Contention plays (dated 1619),
yet no less than fifteen marks—pots, croziers,
fleurs-de-lis—in the four copies of King Lear (falsely dated 1608);
and in a single copy—the Garrick-British Museum
copy—of The Merchant of
Venice (misdated 1600) eight or nine different
marks within its ten sheets.[7] Dr. Greg then
doubted that similar wild mixtures were likely to occur
elsewhere; and they are indeed rare; but I have
found them in a group of plays by
Fletcher and Shirley emanating from the same
printing-house in the Barbican, with the imprint of Thomas
Cotes, a score of years later.
[8] As for the
job-lot hypothesis, it remains plausible, but it has not
been proved, and may not be necessary to account for the
multiplicity of marks.
The moderate mixture of papers generally found in books allows
a sui generis explanation. It lies
in the manner in which paper was manufactured, packed in
quires and reams, gathered by factors into bales,
transported by waggon or boat, and shelved in warehouses.
As a generalized procedure is hard to visualize, let us
think in terms of books printed in England in the
seventeenth century—though the implications extend
beyond these limits of time and place. For in the
seventeenth century the ordinary papers used in English
books came mainly from just across the Channel, from
Normandy and Brittany.[9]
The rushing streams near such towns as Vire, Sourdeval,
Fougères, Morlaix turned the wheels of a host of
papermills, small family usines,
mostly, with just one vat to dip paper-moulds in, and a
small output daily.[10] Though little is known
of his operations, a marchand
papetier or factor seems to have bought up
(weekly, say) the paper from various mills in a
district.[11] As sometimes many mills
were clustered along one stream[12] and may have
been
served by the same maker of moulds,
we find here a reasonable explanation of the diversity of
marks in books and also of the similarity of design often
seen in a sequence of such marks. Paper watermarked with
the arms of France and Navarre may appear in a series of
sheets, all of one pattern but with the labels of various
papermakers attached.
[13] When reams and bales of
paper stood on the wharves at Caen or Morlaix or
Rochelle,
[14] we may suppose they had
been sorted rather according to size and quality than
according to make and mark. And no doubt the piling into
cargo boats, the unloading at London, the stacking in the
warehouse of the London paper merchant and later on the
shelves of the printer he sold paper to—all this
handling contributed to the mixture of papers we find in
books. And much might happen in laying out tokens of paper
for the presses. All in all, it is hardly surprising there
were few books consistent in their paper, hardly
surprising that sometimes reams of differently marked
papers were used in the printing of individual
edition-sheets.
[15]
Yet this is not all. Within the reams themselves the paper was
in a sense consistent. But a subtle variation occurred,
due to the number of moulds, and occasionally the number
of vats, used in its making.
Students of the history of paper know that pairs of moulds were used in its manufacture.
Regularly, if not inevitably, two similar moulds were
employed together, in all mills, in the making of all
sizes and qualities of paper. It is so today for homemade
paper.[16] The vatman, after
placing the deckle,[17] plunges a mould
into his tub of paper pulp, expertly
takes up just enough of the paste or allows the excess to
run over the farther edge, removes the deckle, and passes
the mould along the stay
[18] to his helper. The
coucher, after allowing the sheet to dry a moment, turns
it out on the felt or woolen on top of the post
[19] he is building, puts the mould on
the bridge,
[20] and presently lays
another felt for the following sheet. Meanwhile, the
vatman has taken up a second mould, added the deckle, and
is forming the next sheet as he formed the first. The
process goes on all day, the vatman passing the mould with
the newly made sheet to the coucher, and the coucher
returning the companion mould empty to the vatman. A good
team at the vat and felts work rhythmically and
efficiently at their equal jobs, and produce up to eight
reams of paper a day.
[21] From time to time the
layboy removes the posts of felts and paper to the paper
press.
[22]
Documentary and material evidence shows that moulds were made
and used in pairs from at least the early seventeenth
century. Louis Le Clert, citing records of the region of
Troyes in Champagne, tells us that "Dans l'inventaire
après décès de dame Jeanne Delalne, .
. . dressé en juin 1614, il est fait mention de
'deux paires de formes servant á faire papier. . .
.'"[23] Alexandre Nicolaï, in
discussing the inspectors who visited papeteries to secure conformance with the
Tariff of 1739, publishes several reports that mention
pairs of moulds. For instance, at Creysse (near Bergerac)
in Périgord, Inspector Marouze found "dans un
moulin exploité par le Sieur Jardel . . . trois paires de formes avec
leurs couvertes
dont il y en a une paire
marqué aux
Armes
d'Amsterdam, une autre marquée aux
OOO, et une autre paire
marquée à la
fleur de
lys, qui ont été
poinçonnées comme conformes."
[24] Dard Hunter quotes a bill for moulds
bought of Peter Wynne in London in August 1783 for Mark
Willcox, the papermaker of Ivy Mills, Chester,
Pennsylvania. It lists "1 Pair Double Fools Cap Paper
Moulds" at £5 5s and "1 Pair Double Post
Do" at £5.
[25] And Alfred Schulte, in summing up
certain results of German research, notes that "Im Jahre
1600 hatte die Oberfichtenmühle 2 Paar Formen, 1602
Doos 37 Paar, 1753 Röthenbach bei St. Wolfgang 11
Paar, 1839 Fischlaken bei Werden 14 Paar (darunter 2 Paar
Doppelformen)."
[26] Dard Hunter informs me
that the Paper Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts contains
"a good many
pairs of European
moulds" with their attendant deckles; and I understand
there are similar pairs in the Gutenberg Museum at
Mainz.
The double moulds (Doppelformen) or
divided moulds mentioned above were a development of the
eighteenth century, in which two moulds usually of small
format (such as foolscap) were placed side by side, so
that a skilled vatman might dip two sheets at a time.
Schulte has discussed their use in Germany,[27] Povey and Foster their probable use
in England from 1709 or earlier,[28] and Labarre,
with excellent illustrations, a well-preserved double
mould of Honig & Zoon, famous Dutch papermakers.[29] Naturally, the companion sheets of
such a mould exhibit similar watermarks, as Schulte's and
Labarre's illustrations show. But double moulds themselves
were made and used in pairs, as we can see from the
Willcox purchase of 1783.
Although some early accounts of papermaking make no mention of
pairs of moulds, the standard accounts, of course, do.
Thus,
La Lande in his
Art de faire le papier (Paris, 1761), the
authoritative voice of the eighteenth century, remarks:
Une seule couverture suffit pour les deux formes
qu'on emploie dans le travail du papier; car . . .
l'une des deux formes est toujours
découverte au moment où l'autre se
plonge dans la cuve avec sa couverture.
And later in describing the
process:
Le Plongeur, en ôtant la couverture de dessus
cette première forme, la place tout de suite
sur la seconde forme, qu'on lui donne pour la
plonger à son tour.
. . . le Coucheur releve sa forme, en commencement par
la bonne rive; il la rend au Plongeur aussi nette
qu'avant qu'elle eût été
plongée, & il trouve sur le trapan de
cuve une seconde feuille à coucher qui a
été formée pendant qu'il
couchoit la première, & qu'il releve en
passant, avant que d'étendre le feutre.
Ainsi l'on voit, qu'au moyen de deux formes qui
sont toujours en mouvement, il n'y a point de temps
perdu: pendant qu'une forme se plonge, l'autre se
couche; quand le Plongeur passe une forme au
Coucheur, il en reçoit une autre qui est
vuide, sur laquelle il pose la couverture qu'il
retire de dessus la première, & il
plonge de nouveau.[30]
La Lande offers a series of valuable plates, among which no.
XI pictures a vatman dipping one forme while his coucher is releasing a sheet
from the other; and another pair of moulds is seen in the
foreground. This plate has been reproduced by Renker.[31] Hunter has brought together several
instructive pictures of papermaking in which the two
moulds in use can plainly be seen.[32]
Though historians of paper have thus stressed the fact of
companion moulds, not much attention has been paid to the
companion watermarks produced by such moulds. (Are they
identical? Are they different?) Relatively few collectors
have taken note of them; and bibliographers, at least in
the English-speaking world, have seemed oblivious of them.
A reason perhaps is that McKerrow, in the bibliographer's
bible, makes no mention of pairs of moulds, though he
gives a short description of papermaking.[33] Inasmuch as bibliographers in their
innocence commonly assume that the papermarks
in a quire or ream are invariant and
indistinguishable, what follows has a
raison d'être—and
illustrations.
Watermarks result from designs made of wire and attached to
the moulds. Le Clert points out that "La confection des
formes était une industrie spéciale
exercée par les formiers ou
formaires."[34] That is, skilled
artisans set up as makers of moulds and supplied the needs
of a papermaking region. Less often they were papermakers
themselves.[35] An examination of old
moulds, such as those at the Dard Hunter Paper Museum,
leaves little doubt that European mould-makers came to be
exceedingly clever workmen, seasoning the wood and
securing the laid wires and buttressing the chain wires as
they did.[36] They fashioned the watermark
patterns out of brass wire and sewed them to the moulds
with finer wire.[37] Though the ordinary
wireform was not a work of art, particularly after a
period of use, it was sufficient and not unattractive; and
it was often so neatly duplicated as to deceive students
into supposing that companion marks are the same marks.
Thus cataloguers of incunabula or Renaissance books who
state categorically "This copy has the same watermark
throughout" are usually, if not invariably, wrong.
The maker of moulds can hardly have intended to deceive
anyone. It was enough if a pair of moulds resembled each
other so closely that the vatman would always know them
for mates. What was important was that the formier should cut the mould
frames precisely alike, so that the single deckle would
fit them both neatly. But the twin watermarks might vary
somewhat in height or position or details of design
without affecting the certitude of their belonging
together. Indeed, as we shall see, the mould-maker must
sometimes have intended a distinction, as when he put the
handle of a pot once on the left, once on the right. Some
more patent
differences may have
resulted from two mould-makers working together, or from a
papermaker improvising a filigree in imitation of one that
was lost. Even when a skilled artisan took special pains
with moulds for fine paper (as sometimes he did), the
complexity of the design, differences in chains and
lettering, and wear of the wireforms in use prevented one
watermark from being or continuing to be a replica of the
other. Standardization was not yet. With good sight,
undiffused light, and a millimeter scale, the
bibliographer today can train himself to distinguish the
watermarks from companion moulds, except where heavy print
or close binding serve to defeat him.
Though some have not pondered his words, Briquet spoke clearly
on these matters, out of years of experience:
. . .
chacun sait que dans l'ancienne manière de
faire le papier on se servait de deux moules ou
formes que l'ouvrier plongeait alternativement dans
la pâte. Le papier produit, portait donc par
parts égales l'empreinte de chacune des
formes employées et ce mélange se
voit dans chaque rame et dans chaque main de ce
papier. Ces deux variétés du
filigrane sont parfois
identiques au point qu'on ne les distingue
que par la place un peu différente que
chacune d'elles occupe sur la feuille de papier.
Parfois les deux variétés sont
divergentes, voy.
coupe (n
os 4542 et 4543),
couronne (n
os 4791 et
4792),
croix grecque (n
os 5525 et 5526); le plus
souvent elles sont
similaires n'offrant entre elles que des
différences légères de forme
ou de dimension, voy.
pot
(n
os 12.893 et 12.894),
serpent (n
os 13.801 et 13.802),
tête de boeuf (n
os 14.388 et 14.389).
[38]
If perchance the term
filigrane identique is slightly
misleading, this is the lesson of the master, and the
reader would do well to examine the indicated pairs of
marks before entering the forest.
It is convenient to refer to Briquet's several categories of
degree as twin watermarks, a term
suggesting either identical or ordinary pairs of twins.
The term companion watermarks also
has useful connotations. But for purposes of efficient
analysis and description, I have found it necessary to
observe certain points of
difference which recur in twin watermarks.
Among useful points of difference are these:
- 1) Difference of mould-end. Often the pairs
of marks appear in different halves of their
respective moulds and the sheets of paper made on
them: variant a centered in
the left halfsheet,
b in the right halfsheet.
Actually, this is mainly an inference from the
fact that some marks read in and some read out.
Frequently the inference may be checked by the
indentations made by the watermark or chain wires.
Where these are clear, it appears that commonly,
if not normally, the lettering on the mould itself
was reversed, as in typography; that is, a
watermark in a left halfsheet with left-to-right
lettering usually was impressed by a wireform with
right-to-left lettering in the right half of the
mould; for the indented side or "smooth" side is
obviously the mould side of the paper. Of course,
there are exceptions, as when a label was turned
and resewn non-reversed, In ambiguous or uncertain
cases the Difference may be called one of in and
out.
- 2) Difference of chain-position. Sometimes a
mark fits neatly between the chains while its twin
does not. Or a small mark is centered in one
instance but touches a chain in the other. Some
pairs are centered on a
chain, with the line cutting through at slightly
different points. A few are sewn to a chain or
between chains that do not correspond to those of
the companion mould, the count being different
from the end-chain or deckle, so that they appear
higher or lower in a quarto fold. We may call a
chain that splits a watermark its center chain, and those that it
falls between or that cut its edges its attendant chains or outer and inner chains.
- 3) Difference of chain-space or
chain-pattern. When the attendant chains vary as
much as 2 mm. in their distance from each other,
this often is the easiest means of telling the
twins apart. A smaller variation, though usable,
may prove elusive, because of paper shrinkage or
vagaries in the parallelism of the line.
Differences of as much as 4 mm. occur. Actually,
the chain-structure of two handmade moulds will
never be precisely alike; thus remote chains are
sometimes as useful as near ones, if they differ
markedly in relative position or form.
Occasionally an end-chain or other margin-chain
has a wobble or a break that may be seen at a
glance.
- 4) Difference of slant. At least one of the
marks has not been sewn to the mould in an upright
position and leans to right or left. Or an
important part has been bent. In doubtful cases it
is wise to measure upper and lower distances from
the nearest chains;
particularly
in quartos, where one sees but part of the
watermark at a time and may be uncertain which
side of the paper one is looking at.
- 5) Difference of reversed pattern. The
mould-maker has made one mark the reverse or
mirror-image of the other, except for names and
initials. In the Arms of France and Navarre, for
instance, Navarre may be first on the left, then
on the right, with respect to the lettering below.
This makes a pretty distinction, which seems to
have been intentional on the part of some
mould-makers.
- 6) Difference of label. One mark carries a
"full name", the other mere initials or a
name-abbreviation: as DVAVLEGARD and DVG. Or one
may have initials, the other none. Or a name may
appear in two spellings. The labels themselves may
have different shapes. And occasionally one of the
labels gets inverted or attached to the wrong end
of a grape or shield watermark.
- 7) Difference of countermark. Countermarks
are of course the smaller marks that appear
opposite the main marks in the other half of the
mould or sheet; they are common after 1650 or so.
When they contain lettering, they vary much as
labels do. Sometimes one of the countermarks has
fallen out of its mould. Frequently, though the
mould-maker has made the main marks "identical,"
he has taken less trouble with the countermark
letters and has spaced them differently. And one
set of countermark letters may be reversed or even
inverted in respect to the main mark. Those
countermarks that are letterless differ in detail
or position as other marks do.
- 8) Difference of distinctive detail. One mark
has an element of design not found in the other. A
pot may have a fleur-de-lis within its base, its
companion none. One bunch of grapes may have a
curved stem, the other a comparatively straight
one. Such differences may have been original or
consequent to use. It was easy for separately
attached bits of the design to break off or drop
out during the process of papermaking or the
brushing or cleaning of moulds after use.
- 9) Difference of sewing. Particularly in
early watermarks, where heavy sewing-wire was
used, the sewing marks can be seen.
These are what Sotheby calls dots.[39] Their
differences of position may serve to distinguish
nearly identical marks. When the wire-forms came
loose, then arose Differences of resewing. In such
cases the dots often are plainer, especially if
linen thread has been used in temporary
replacement; and the sewings may appear in new
places. At this same time the watermark itself may
have been moved, so that it reappears between
wider chains (say) or even in the other half of
the mould.
- 10) Difference of distortion. Parts of the
design have been bent out of position. This
ugliness is less often due to malformation than to
deterioration. The wireforms commonly went to
pieces before the moulds to which they were
attached.[40] They came partly
unsewn, at one or more points. The result was
sprung wires, bent wires, shifts in
position—and increased differentiation from
the twin mark. The wires might be further bent in
resewing. Certain of these distortions in the
life-history of watermarks will be illustrated.
The awkward thing is that the shape of a mark may
change in some difficult-to-describe particular
while the detective pursues it from gathering to
gathering of a pompous folio. Naturally, such
changes limit the certainty of recognition when he
meets the mark in another book.
These ten points of difference, closely observed, serve to
train the bibliographical eye. Those points having to do
with chains are perhaps the most helpful (despite the
vagaries of resewing), and the student soon learns the
advantage of measuring the chainspaces as part of the
routine of examination. Distances of key points from the
attendant chains often repay measurement, though much
measuring wastes time. Slight differences in the overall
size of a watermark prove less useful than differences of
two or five millimeters in a part, for these the eye can
judge. The filigranist will learn not to assume while
looking at one twin what the main point of difference is
likely to be: both twins may be disfigured by a harelip
and yet differ markedly in some unexpected detail. In
note-taking it is important to follow a neat, consistent
practice, to avoid
ambiguity and
differences that are not differences. Assuming that
papermarks appear "normally" in the left halfsheet, we may
agree to record measurements
away
from the deckle and
in to the
center of the sheet, that is towards the folio fold or the
quarto headlines, or else in the direction of the
lettering or the normal arrangement of a coat of arms,
though then we have to note the direction as
out. I have adopted a system of
using square brackets to enclose the breadth of a
significant detail or of a whole design, and vertical
lines (or typewriter colons) at need to show the relevant
position of chains; and I find this system avoids later
misinterpretation of notes. Thus the crescent or fleuron
in the superstructure of a pot may measure :3[13]5: or,
more simply, 3[13]5—which means that the part is 13
mm. wide, centered between chains 21 mm. apart, 3 mm. from
its outer chain and 5 from its inner chain (unless we are
reading
out with the lettering). It
may be useful to insert the name of the part: 3[Crescent
13]5. Similarly, [4:3] or 4:3 indicates a detail split by
a chain; and [2:20:22:2]-out measures a shield extending
over chain-spaces of 20 and 22 mm., and 2 mm. on either
side of them, reading towards the deckle. When the edges
of the mark coincide with chains, the measures can be set
down as [:20:22:] or o[20:22]o or even [20:22]—if
the missing detail is understood. [Fl 17:23:] or 5[Fl
17:23]o describes a royal fleur-de-lis 40 mm. across its
petals, cut left of center by one chain, and just touching
its inner chain. Luckily, most papermarks appear upright
on or between chains and so may readily be measured
consistently in one direction,
across the chains, in both folios and
quartos.
[41]
The student may observe examples or possible examples of twin
watermarks in various published collections, though the
collector himself may not have recognized their nature.
Briquet, as we have seen, points out examples of filigranes similarires and filigranes divergentes.[42] Curiously, one of the
earliest writers on the subject of watermarks understood
their basic nature better than some later men. Though
Samuel Leigh Sotheby may not have
inspected papermoulds, his observant eye had noted that
watermarks in incunabula turn up in twos and multiples of
two:
The Sieves appear to have been procured either in
pairs, fours, sixes, eights, or twelves, and about
the centre of each, prior to its being used, the
watermark was fastened, by the workman of the
paper-maker, on the inside of the form, between the
upright or cross-wires . . .; an operation which,
it is almost needless to observe, can never be so
accurately executed as not to present some shades
of difference every time, even when it has to be
repeated with the
same
identical instrument; not to speak of the
difference that must exist when the duplicates are
employed. Accordingly, it is only by comparing them
together, with reference to this disposition of
their component parts, that their actual
differences can be satisfactorily determined. Thus,
when the tracing of one is placed over the
fac-simile of another of the same device, no
difference is frequently discernible, except in its
position with regard to the upright or cross-wires,
being in some more oblique, or at a greater
distance, than in others; a difference sufficient,
however, to show that the sheets of paper were not
made from the same sieve.
[43]
Except
for the assumption that all the moulds were used in one
mill, one or two misconceptions concerning the affixing of
watermarks, and an overstatement of their similarity, this
is all very good; and it is surprising that such remarks,
published in 1858, have so little influenced collectors
and bibliographers. Briquet, Weiss, Schulte, and Dard
Hunter have added something to the subject; but Ataide e
Melo, Churchill, Nicolaï, and Heawood (among
collectors) have shown little awareness of this thing
which is part of the essential nature of watermarks.
Heawood, to be sure, frequently reproduces a number of
marks from one volume, and sometimes adds a variant detail
or countermark "from another sheet," without noting their
implications, yet thus furnishes the clue to companion
marks, particularly of the seventeenth century.
[44] However, it is only Sotheby who sets
a considerable number of pairs of marks (of the fifteenth
century) side by side.
[45] Schulte shows how such
twins became quadruplets in the double moulds of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
[46] And Dard Hunter
notices not merely a variant bull's head in the Gutenberg
Bible, but several pairs among American watermarks.
[47] Recently in the
Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1950,
[48] through photographic illustration of
the "initial watermark of the Craig and Parkers mill, the
earliest paper mill in Kentucky," he has shown that this
mark is twins.
[49] And now in his
magnificent work on
Papermaking by Hand
in America (Chillicothe, 1950) he publishes
facsimiles within handmade
paper of the same pair of Kentucky moulds (in
laid paper) and of two pairs of early Ohio moulds (in wove
paper).
[50]
The plates accompanying the present article offer simple
examples of twin watermarks, with a few that lead to
complications. Among those photographed, one pair are
taken from a mid-sixteenth-century manuscript, three from
endpapers removed from seventeenth-century bindings, two
from a mid-seventeenth-century folio with plates, and two
from a royal writing-book resplendent with the watermarked
arms of King William and Queen Anne.[51] The marks as reproduced may vary
slightly from their natural size.
During the discussion the reader needs to keep in mind
pictures of the old moulds, such as those illustrated by
Clapperton, Hunter, and Degaast.[52] The chains
ran the short way of the mould, so as not to impede
surplus pulp from falling over the edge away from the
vatman, and commonly produced
chainlines in the paper from 17 to 25 mm. (or ¾ to
1 inch) apart.
[53] Though extant moulds
show the main watermark centered in either half, with the
countermark similarly placed in the opposite half, my
notes suggest that in the period before countermarks the
watermark was oftener on the right side of the mould, and
thus in the left halfsheet of the paper, reading in;
except that certain seventeenth-century mould-makers put
one mark of a pair on the left and one on the right. The
point is worth further study. It is not easy to be certain
in an individual case, if the indentations are not clear,
for some marks no doubt had their lettering left to right
on the mould.
[54]
SHIELD: STARS DIVIDED PER BEND. MS Volume of Property Records,
Langenzerdorf, Austria, 1556-1738. 4°. Jirgal. Fig.
1.
The manuscript, written in various German hands, deals with
property-holdings at a village near Vienna. The first
entries are dated 1556. Sixty-nine leaves of script (some
crossed out) are followed by eighty or so blank leaves,
and a few apparently have been lost. The paper is coarse,
rough, slightly sized, with leaves measuring 7¾ x 6
inches (198 x 154 mm.). The watermark, as the illustration
shows, is a small shield of about 18 x 16 mm. centered
between chainlines 26-27 mm. apart. There are two
varieties, and they may be distinguished at a glance.
Variant a slants to the right, and
variant b to the left, at angles of
about 80°; and further particularization is
unnecessary. As there are no other marks in the volume, it
is instructive to note how many instances of each variant
there are. Expectations are neatly satisfied: a occurs 17 times and b 16 times. The arms, two
six-pointed stars separated per bend, appear to be those
of Kaufbeuren (see Heawood, 490, 509), a city fifty or so
miles southwest of Munich. Luckily the mark occurs just
above the middle of the sheet (higher in variant a) and is not caught in the
quarto fold. Judging by the position of the end-wires or
tranchefiles,[55] along with the indentations, the two
variants were situated in the opposite halves of their respective moulds,
non-reversed.
POT P LEGRAND. Endpapers, c. ?1660.
4°. AHS (my copy). Fig. 2.
The pot watermark, so common in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, underwent a thousand permutations. Here is a
style not illustrated in Heawood, nor elsewhere,
apparently. Many a Norman pot is topped by a
crescent and fleuron, has five lobes
with alternate trefoils and single balls, has bars across
its bowl and a bell-shaped base; but the name-label below
is certainly rare, though it occurs often enough in grape,
shield, and fleur-de-lis marks. The handle is more
commonly on the left; and it is the handle here that
readily distinguishes the twin variants. In variant
a the lower part of the handle
curls neatly 2 mm. within the attendant chain, whereas in
b it is broken or sprung and
extends 3 mm. across the line. A short examination reveals
other differences. Though both pots measure 81 x 46 and
are nicely centered on a chain,
a's
chain-spaces are 20.5:20.5 and
b's
19.5:19.5. The crescent in
a is
relatively open and marred by a loose sewing-wire, and
measures 5:4. That in
b is more
circular and measures 4:5. The foliage on
a measures 7[13:14]6 and the
more luxuriant flowering on
b
4[15:16]3. Several differences show up in the lettering:
b being distinguished by a
label that touches the left chain and is cut by the right
chain along the right of the N. In checking pot watermarks
in quartos, it is important to note points of difference
in both halves of the mark. I am uncertain on which side
the deckle was in this instance. The label P. LEGRAND
gives us the name of a papermaker, presumably Norman, not
mentioned by Heawood or Bourde de la Rogerie.
[56]
FOOLSCAP & COUNTERMARK MPX. Endpapers, c. 1688. 2°. AHS. Fig. 3.
This pair of foolscap watermarks is such as to delight a small
boy, if not a bibliographer. For watermarks are not
lacking in humor. In variant a the
Fool has thrust his long nose up to a chainline; in b he has pushed it quite 4 mm.
over. Though this may be difference enough for all parties
concerned, the pair illustrate several other points of
difference. Fool a (92 x 58) has
the five (Norman) points of his coat well separated,
though the back one is squeezed and others are bent; while
Fool b (94 x 58) has two of his
points hanging together so that a bell touches the
reversed 4 below. Where Fool a is a
roundhead, b is a flathead with a
larger cephalic index. The main chain-spaces of a measure 22:25 in, those of b 24:23.5; and the mid-chain of a splits one of the three balls,
while that of b merely touches it.
Each of these Fools is accompanied by a countermark, a
label reading MPX, and these labels are also readily
distinguishable. Countermark a (11
x 33) is cut by a chain 16:17 out, along the back of the
P; and b (10 x 34) is cut 16:18
between the M and P. In both endpaper sheets the watermark
appears in the left leaf and the countermark in the right,
and the leaves measure 11⅞ x 8⅛" (301 x 208
mm.), with some deckle remaining at the fore-edges.
According to Heawood, the initials MPX stand for M.
Pallix, apparently a Norman papermaker of the latter part
of the century.[57] Though
the endpapers are undated, I note a similar fool with
countermark MPX in a Sanderson pamphlet of 1688,
[58] and Heawood points out another in
the
Paradise Lost of 1695.
[59] But recently I have come upon
the identical Flathead Fool of Fig. 3
b in
The Historical and
Chronological Theatre of Christopher Helvicus
(M. Flesher, 1687), ICU copy, sheet S. He is at all points
the same, except that the second point of his coat has not
yet fallen against the front of the figure 4. The ICN copy
has a quite different Pudding-faced Fool (with countermark
MPX) in the same sheet.
SHIELD FM & THREE LIONS. Endpapers, c. 1610. 2°. AHS. Fig. 4.
The crowned shield with quarterly a fess and three lions is
one of the more intriguing of French marks. Though the
design may have come out of the Rhine country,[60] the style here is certainly French.
The date 1610 sometimes found in the base of the shield
may denote the first regnal year of Louis XIII. Other
shields of the time have Norman name-abbreviations within
the fess, but the initials FM have not been identified.
The oddest thing about the present pair is—what the
reader will have seen at once—the reversed date of
variant b. Though the initials
appear in a customary position in the first quarter, and
the lions ramp regularly to the left, the year has got in
backwards, except for the numeral 6.[61] The marks are not among the
prettiest examples of the mould-maker's art, for they have
suffered some deterioration, but they well illustrate
common features of ècu
watermarks, such as the crown with fleur-de-lis, "horns,"
and band of annulets, the spear-rests on either side, and
the conventionalized toison d'or
below. Such complex designs invite differences. Shield a (83 x 48) is elongated and
well centered on a line between spaces 19:20. Shield b (81 x 54) has its fleur-de-lis
spread between chains 20 mm. apart. Shield a has a deeper fess and taller
letters, and has lost the outer wire from its second
quarter. Shield b has extended
horns, a tailless lion in its second quarter, and a
smaller sheepskin below. And so on. The differences
provide practice in observation. As these endpapers have
been cut down, it is uncertain whether the shields are
from left or right halves of their moulds.[62] We shall have more lions anon.
ARMS OF KING WILLIAM III. Blank Writing-book, c. 1715. 2°. ICU. Fig. 5.
Style of Heawood 442.
A recent acquisition of the University of Chicago Libraries is
a thin folio volume neatly bound in morocco, stamped with
pots and the initials
IP, and containing
3 unnumbered and 83 hand-numbered leaves of blank paper.
The pages measure 10¾ x 6¾" (272 x 169 mm.)
and are of a good, creamy-white paper. The unnumbered
leaves and leaves 1-44 are watermarked with the handsome
arms of William III, with simple countermark Crown GR; and
leaves 45-83 similarly with the arms of Queen Anne after
the Union with Scotland (1707), with countermark GR in a
wreath and oval. That is, 55% are of the one and 45% of
the other. In each instance the papermaker, whether Dutch
or English,
[63] has made an
extraordinary attempt to produce identical watermarks; and
a bibliophile examining the volume might never note the
difference.
King William's arms consist of a crowned oval and shield
quartered with the arms of England, Scotland, Ireland,
England, with an inescutcheon of the Lion of Nassau, the
motto "Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense" in the surround and
"Semper Eadem" below. The whole measures 5 inches tall, or
126 x 81 mm. Both shields of the pair are carefully
centered on a chain that splits crown and shield; and the
shields fit precisely between attendant chains spaced
24-25 mm. (nearly an inch) apart. Differences are not
readily distinguishable within the shields; but in a there is a space below the
harp, and the Scotch lion is higher within its tressure
flory. The lettering betrays a discongruity. In a the O of HONI is opposite the
S of SEMPER; in b nearly opposite
the E. In b the I of SOIT slants.
In a the Q of QVI is low. In a the R of SEMPER almost touches
the center chain; in b it lacks 2
mm. or so. This last is perhaps the point most easy to
note in turning the pages; for some variations transpire
only when the photographs are placed side by side. The
countermarks (not illustrated) are even more difficult to
distinguish; but one has a longish foreleg on its R, the
other a slightly curved foot. So much for King
William.
ARMS OF QUEEN ANNE. Same blank volume. Fig 6. Style of Heawood
441.
This is the feminine counterpart, on slightly thicker paper.
The designs measure nearly 3¾ inches tall, or 94 x
64 mm., on chain-spaces as before. Again the crowns and
shields are carefully centered, with the inner oval this
time fitting within the attendant chains. The quartered
arms consist of the three leopards of England impaled with
the lion of Scotland (with tressure on three sides) in the
first and fourth, the lilies of France in the second, and
the harp of Ireland in the third, with merely the HONI
SOIT motto in the band. Again differences within the
shield are hard to see; but in variant a the right side of the shield is noticeably
wider, and the harp is
perhaps larger
and closer to the lower edge. The buckle below shield
a is certainly broader. Easy
points of difference reside in the word MAL. Not merely
does the line cut at a different place, but the A is broad
in one and narrow in the other, and in
b the L seems to be broken. The countermarks
(not shown) are similar to that in Heawood 448 and may be
distinguished by a break at the top of one oval. It is
interesting to note that the main marks of William are
distributed 11 and 12, and those of Anne 10 and 10. But
just why the two papers were thus combined in one
writing-book is not very clear.
[64] The use of
the countermark GR with the arms of William and Anne
suggests a date not long after the accession of George
I.
POT C/AB. Inigo Jones, The Most Notable
Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called
Stone-heng (J. Flesher, 1655). 2°. AHS,
ICU. Fig. 7.
The prevailing watermark in Jones's Stonehenge is a tall, baroque pot, surmounted
by a circular crescent and a large fleuron (or
quatrefoil), with five lobes and sets of trefoils emerging
from an embroidered pot-cover, with a fleur-de-lis on its
throat, a crescent C on its bowl, and another fleuron
within its derby-shaped base. It, of course, is twins. But
that is not all. Each twin lives and grows old. Fig. 7a1 shows one of these glorious
pots (109 x 47) as it emerged proudly from the atelier of the formaire, perfect in every detail, except for
the leftist position of its base fleuron. Its top crescent
is centered, its handle is a symmetrical S, its bowl and
its base are polished and unscratched. But pots lead a
hard life, whether in the tavern or the papermill, and
pictured next (a2) is the same pot
after its handle has been banged, its bowl dented, and its
derby base woefully crushed; and then (a3) this pot in a further state of
degradation. Actually, I have distinguished as many as six
states! Where at first its crescent is placed neatly
between chains reading 4[15]4 in,
in later states deformed it appears with the crescent sewn
beside a chain, or cut by it, or recentered, sometimes
reading out, sometimes in. In one the handle is
distorted, but the base looks still good. In others the
base is wrenched first one way, then the other. Strangest
is the state (a3) in which the top
crescent is once again centered, reading in, and the crescent C on the bowl has been
resewn so it looks reversed! Still reasonably sound of
body though infirm of limb, this pot might yet live
through further accidents into age and ugliness.
All the while this pot has a twin that also experiences some
of life's hard knocks. Of almost identical size (111 x
47), it is distinguished by a thickish crescent above, a
flattened left petal, a thinner crescent C on an eggshaped
bowl, a higher bar on the A and a fleuron nicely centered
within the base. Its letters consistently read out. The plate shows four
states: b1 with the handle prettily
curled and tacked to the chain; b2
in the same position
but with the points
of the top crescent separated and the lower line of the
handle broken and sprung;
b3 with
the top crescent and fleuron sewn to a chain at their
right and with the handle repaired and sagging; and
b4 with the pot bent and impaled
on a line and the handle sagging farther. There is even a
variety, between
b1 and
b2, with the crescent points
parted and the handle still intact.
a Top crescent thin. Top
fleuron regular. Base fleuron left.
|
Form |
Crescent Letters |
Detail |
AHS |
ICU |
1 |
Handle S-shaped |
4[15]4 |
IN |
S sewn to chain |
M4 * |
M4 |
|
" " |
3:12 |
OUT |
Chain along B |
N2 |
N3 |
|
" deformed |
7[15]0 |
IN |
Pot tipped left |
N4 |
2 |
" & base deformed |
6[15]1 |
OUT |
Chain along B |
pl 1 * |
F4 |
|
" " " " |
7:8 |
OUT |
Trefoils o[23:22]1 |
I3 |
pl 5 |
3 |
" " " " |
4[15]4 |
IN |
Crescent C |
pl 5 * |
pl 7 |
|
|
|
|
reversed |
b Top crescent thick. Top
fleuron petal flat. Base fleuron
centered.
|
Form |
Crescent Letters |
Detail |
AHS |
ICU |
1 |
Handle curled |
13:3 |
OUT |
Crescent joined |
|
M2 * |
|
" " |
13:3 |
OUT |
" parted |
|
K4 |
2 |
" wire sprung |
13:3 |
OUT |
" " |
|
I3 * |
3 |
" sagging |
6[16]0 |
OUT |
Handle mended |
pl 3 * |
C4 |
4 |
" " low |
7:9 |
OUT |
Pot bent left |
pl 4 * |
E4 |
All this is extraordinary. The volume is a thin folio of 60
leaves (A-P4), with portrait and 5 folding plates (two on
larger paper with shield watermarks). My copy measures
11⅛ x 7½'' (282 x 190 mm.); ICU is slightly
cut down and lacks the portrait and some plates. A smaller
Pot C/AB appears sporadically (AHS M3, clear), Pillars CG
(?) turn up once (AHS O3), and in gatherings P and A a
fine Cardinal's Hat IVL, as twins. Yet much of the
life-story of the big C/AB pots is enacted before our
eyes, with late states the commoner for both. In other
folios I have encountered variations in sewing, a second
or even a third state—but nothing like this. Yet
reasons are not far to seek. The paper is clearly "fine
pot." As paper improved with age, the papermaker may have
stacked his reams for some months before selling; so that
reams made weeks or months apart came into James Flesher's
printing-house together. Flesher printed plates and early
sheets on deformed pots, and later sheets mainly on the
earlier states. Then finally he ran out of pots and began
using hats; or else he wanted his finest paper at
beginning and end. (The illustrated pots are
asterisked.)
The identification of the papermaker CAB is hardly possible
now; but there are clues. His fondness for the crescent
may have something to do with his name. The smaller C/AB
pot in the Stonehenge volume has three crescents: one aloft, one in the neck,
one in the initial C. Heawood illustrates an undated C/AB
pot with an open, two-lined C (3601); and I have noted a
pair of pots with a like C in
Dudley North's
Forest of Varieties
(R. Cotes, 1645) (CSmH). As for the letters AB, possibly
they stand for ABADIE, a family which within our century
has continued to run a papermill at Theil-sur-Huisne
(Orne), near the eastern confines of Old Normandy.
[65]
CARDINAL'S HAT IVL. Jones, Stone-heng
(1655), as above. Fig. 8.
This watermark well illustrates the normal use of printed
folios in the study of twin watermarks. Though the mark
occurs only in the final and preliminary gatherings (P and
A, in fours) —thus neatly showing the preliminaries
were printed last—and the letterpress of the
dedications mars the photographs, the variants can be
compared in detail. The Cardinal's Hat is from
ecclesiastical heraldry, and thus often appears as a crest
above shields in watermarks—as in Heawood 681-683,
691, 792-800. As a separate watermark the Hat was used for
two decades or so: Heawood lists or illustrates a dozen
varieties from 1649 on;[66] but it is not the
"Cardinalls Armes" of the Oxford Pricelist, 1674.[67] Both Nicolaï and Heawood
picture examples of Cardinal's Hats over handsome
floriated pots;[68] and this combination of
ideas, along with the appearance of hats in the Stonehenge, suggests that the
Cardinal paper was for a time regarded as a fine pot
paper.
In the illustrations the hats can be distinguished both by
their shapes and by their positions relevant to the
chains. Hat a (59 x 65), is spread
over several chain-spaces and measures 1[54]14 in along its brim, with its
crown cut by the center chain. Hat b (57 x 61) measures 8[53]7 out along its brim and has its crown jammed
between lines 24 mm. apart. The tassels differ too. The
letters IVL probably stand for I. Vaulegeard,[69] of a papermaking family with a mill
or mills near Sourdeval in Basse-Normandie.[70] As the
letters on Hat a read in and those
on Hat b read out, reversed on the
indented side, the matching moulds had their marks in
contrary halves. (The illustrations are from the AHS copy,
A2, A3.)
We now turn to a few examples of twin watermarks in
Shakespearian quartos and other important books, and begin
to note bibliographical uses and applications.
POT P. Shakespeare, King Lear ([N.
Okes], 1608). 4°. CSmH, NN.
In recent years the Pide Bull quarto has received much
attention
from bibliographers and
students of printing. Greg, Bowers, and others have
revealed much of its printing history.
[71] Yet little notice has been taken of
the paper on which this famous quarto is printed.
[72] Quite possibly (I once said to
myself) the watermarks will throw further light on the way
in which
Lear went through the
press. After an examination of two copies the answer seems
to be No: this is a book with "one watermark throughout."
It is in fact a model of consistency, and its watermarks
verily deserve Briquet's rank of
filigranes identiques. They are neat small
pots, with bars and the letter P etched upon their bowls.
If there are further letters I have not made them out,
because of tight binding in the Lenox-New York copy and
inlaying in the Kemble-Devonshire-Huntington copy. They
are typical Norman pots of the time, with slender necks,
handles at left, and round bowls. A chainline cuts these
pots from top to toe, and provides a subtle means of
distinguishing the variants, there being scarcely more
than a millimeter's difference in its relative positions.
These are the chain-positions, reading up:
|
Trefoil |
Pot Top |
Neck |
Bowl |
Base |
a
|
5:3 |
4:2 |
3:2.5 |
9:10 |
11:13 |
b
|
4:4 |
6:6 |
2.5:3.5 |
9:10 |
12:12 |
In
a the chain-spaces are
22 mm., in
b nearly 23 mm. Pot
a has a rather flat top and a
slightly concave base;
b a curved
top and relatively straight base. Both bowls are 19 mm. So
minute are the differences that an unpractised eye might
well accept these identical twins as the same mark.
[73]
Where only one pair of marks appear it is obvious they offer
little bibliographical help, though they do suggest a
continuous printing operation. If the same pair of pots
turn up in other Okes books of 1608, they might serve to
identify the printing-month.[74] And it is yet
possible to find mixed marks or an instrusive mark in the
ten other extant copies of King
Lear.
POT PA. Shakespeare, The Whole Contention
betweene . . . Lancaster and Yorke (W.
Jaggard, 1619). 4°. CSmH. Greg 23.
It is pleasant to reëxamine the watermarks that Sir
Walter Greg discovered in the Shakespearian quartos of
1619, some of them falsely dated.[75] Among
twenty-seven watermarks he found just one which persisted
through a play; and this one did through both parts of the
Contention, which have
continuous signatures. The other marks were riotously
distributed through eight quartos. The Contention watermark is a pot, no doubt a
Norman pot, though it is topped by a heart within a
circle. Its handle is on the right, with the initials PA
reading toward it. Greg gives a freehand portrait of this
pot,[76] pointing out that "in the
'Contention' the paper is all of one make" and has "one
mark (23) throughout."[77] On the plate he notes:
"The bends [in the wires] are considerable in some cases."
In the light of new experience this remark now suggests
the presence of filigranes
similaires—two varieties differing only
in minor points—and such proves to be the case.
Actually, when one knows the trick, the two are quite easy
to distinguish, for in Pot a the
letters consistently read up, and
in b as consistently down. Unlike the Pide Bull Lear, which had both pots in the
same end of their moulds, the Contention probably had its pots in contrary
ends. These further points also serve to distinguish the
Contention pots (reading
with the letters):
|
Chains |
Circle |
Left ball |
Middle lobe |
Bowl |
P |
Base |
a
|
21 |
7[8]5 |
Bent left |
Slanted rt. |
0[18]2 |
Open |
2[15]3 |
b
|
20 |
6[8]4 |
On point |
Straight |
[1:19].5 |
Closed |
4[15]1 |
In the Huntington copy the distribution is odd:
Pot
a occurs in sheets A B C D E G
H I M N and
b in F K L O P Q; but
we must not always expect a regular alternation in twin
watermarks. Variant
b turns up once
in the Church-Huntington copy of
Pericles (1619), reading, as it should, down.
Heawood has no PA pots, and the meaning of the initials is
uncertain.
In a similar manner most of the other Shakespearian watermarks
of 1619 turn out to be pairs. Pot R/LM (Greg 2) and Pot BP
(Greg 5) are particularly worthy of study. The RG Shields
(Greg 15 & 16) are themselves twins; but the RG/D
Shield (Greg 18) may be quadruplets. These matters are
somewhat complicated and deserve separate treatment.[78]
SHIELD RGD & THREE LIONS. William
Camden, Britannia, tr. Holland (G.
Bishop & J. Norton, 1610). 2°. ICU. Style of
Heawood 576.
Lions again. Camden's great book is a crown folio (ICU
12¾ x 8½'' or 321 x 214 mm.) regularly
watermarked with small crowns, but with crowned shields in
its maps. Most of these are emblazoned with initialed fess
and three lions. The designs (87 x 55 mm.) are neat,
symmetrical, fresh— unlike the abused FM shields of
Fig. 4. But the pattern is the same, the date 1610 again
occupies the base with an annulet below, and the toison d'or now looks more like
a sore tooth than a sheep. The third lion resembles a lion
passant. The initials are G over R D; but the lower
letters are so spaced, with the G above the space, that
they suggest the reading RGD and the Norman papermaker
Richard Guesdon.[79] Heawood nowhere lists
quite so early a specimen of the lions of 1610, though he
found one in John Smith's Map of
Virginia, an Oxford book of 1612.[80]
The Camden twins are much alike. We find them first neatly
centered on chainlines, Shield a on
two 20 mm. spaces, Shield b on two
21.5 mm. spaces. In a the G is
above the front of the R (as in Heawood 576); in b it is spaced between the R and
D. In a the line above the date is
straight; in b it is curved up
below the feet of the left lion. In a the numerals are normal, with the center
chain slightly right of the 6; but in b the 6 is broad or sprung and almost touches
the chain. And, notably, a reads
in, while b reads out. In ICU
Shield a turns up in the maps of
Middlesex, Leicester, Nottingham, Devon, and Scotland; and
b in those of Oxford, Essex,
Worcester, and Ireland.
So far, good. Now we examine further maps—and make twin
discoveries. Both shields have a second state. Finding a in Huntington and Stafford
(ICU), we note that this shield, though again centered on
a chain, has different attendant chains and looks as if
shifted 2 mm. to the right. The letters and date still
read in. Meanwhile b turns up in Buckingham and
Cheshire, no longer centered, but 2 mm. to the left with
respect to the fleur-de-lis bud at top and the vent in the
sheepskin below. And now this
shield reads in, like its mate. As
with the C/AB pots there has been a piece of resewing,
though it is hard to say which state came first. Perhaps
the centering was done by the mouldmaker and the resewing
by a workman in the mill. Photographic comparison might
reveal some slight deterioration, but to the roving eye
all the lions look as fresh as a May morning.
Certain other maps in the volume contain three-lion shields
with the initials IG (for I. Ganne?) in the base point,
but these are distorted beyond
pity and
horror. The reader who wishes to hunt lions will find
lusty ones in Raleigh's
History of the
World (1614, 1621)
[81] and
elsewhere.
CORONET (?) / GRAPES. Ovid, Metamorphosis, tr. Sandys (J. Lichfield [and
W. Stansby], 1632.) 2°. CSmH (2), ICN, ICU, TxU.
The common mark in this crown-size folio[82] is a paltry thing, yet it nicely
illustrates an important point of difference. It
presumably is intended for a small crown with fleur-de-lis
over fifteen grapes in a triangle, being a degenerate form
of Heawood 2343 ff. If the double stems, though, are meant
for a W, it makes no sense in a French mark. Turn the
thing around and it looks like grapes inverted over the
letter M and a pendant. What it is hardly matters, but a
small crown over SM and grapes (ICN 3M4, 2X1) and another
over NG and grapes (ICU 3S1, TxU 3M4) perhaps show its
archetype. The prevailing marks measure about 34 x 18 mm.
Though each varies slightly in position (from resewing),
the pair are distinguishable throughout the volume by the
fact that one bestrides a line and the other wobbles about
in a space. In mark a the tip of
the grapes is on the line between 20 mm. spaces, and the
lily bud (or pendant) shifts slightly within the line.
Mark b commonly measures 1.5[17]1.5
across the grapes, but sometimes it measures 3[17]0 in.
The W or M varies in its bends. These vagaries are
instructive to study but tedious to describe. They do
persuade the bibliographer to expect small variations in
watermark position within a long run of one paper.
The other watermarks in this Ovid deserve careful study. In
some copies at least (ICN, ICU), Shields with Bends and
Shields with Lions turn up in Book X. Usually the plates
contain the ordinary crown/grape watermark (one CSmH, ICN,
TxU), but the Chicago copy offers a procession of lions in
its plates.[83] Yet this hardly answers
the question raised by Bowers and Davis as to what has
happened to the fifty copies known to have been printed on
fine paper.[84]
LABEL G HVET. Milton, Paradise Lost (S.
Simmons, 1667). 4°. CSmH (2), ICN. Fletcher 1.
The commonest watermark in the first edition of Paradise Lost, as Professor
Fletcher has shown, is a small label or cartouche
containing the name G HVET.[85] It appears at
right angles to the quarto fold, with the name divided
between conjugate leaves. Variant a, the one Fletcher notices and illustrates
photographically, is distinguished by a T shaped like a 7
with a long top, and a label with a relatively broad right
end. The G is straight and upright. The label is so placed
between chains that it measures 6[10]7.5 up through the H (though it may vary slightly
with resewing or shrinkage). Variant b has a T with no apparent top, and tapered
label-end. The G is broader, and there are other
differences in the lettering. This label measures 6.5[11]6
up through the H. The
difference of the label ends is easy to see, but sometimes
obscured by type.
The greatest poem in English is printed on "Morlaix paper,"
the cheapest sort imported from France.[86] Such paper contains watermarks
mainly simple and dull, often mere initials, dilapidated
ones, with occasional pillars and shields (Fletcher 4 and
6); here are no ornate pots or arms from Normandy, no fine
foolscap from Angoumois. The papermakers themselves were
Norman, coming to the Morlaix region of Brittany, where
labor was cheap, in 1629 and after.[87] The Huets came among them, and
flourished. Jean Huet, Pierre Huet, other Huets were maîtres papetiers at
Ploudiry, Plourin, Briec.[88] Apparently G. Huet
also made paper in this region south of Morlaix. The GH of
other marks (Fletcher 2) are probably his initials, and
the PH (Fletcher 12) probably those of a Pierre Huet, who
also worked at this time. For I have noted labels with P.
HVET in books of 1657 and after;[89] and Bourde de
la Rogerie mentions "Pierre Huet, papetier à
Morlaix en 1678" and again in 1701,[90] perhaps a different Pierre. Just
possibly the Huets made more out of Paradise Lost than did Milton. This astute
family of papermakers outlasted virtually all their
seventeenth-century
competitors
and—continue to make paper today at Pontrieux
(Côtes du Nord), east of Morlaix.
[91]
The photographic illustrations in Harris Fletcher's facsimile
edition provide excellent aid toward the study of
watermarks in Milton and in Milton's time. A pair of pots
are reproduced as No. A [II,134].
POT R/GD and POT G/PR. John Scheffer, The
History of Lapland, tr. Cremer (Oxford: At the
Theater, 1674). 2°. AHS, ICU. Style of Heawood
3693.
Scheffer's Lapland is a pot
folio—a true folio in
twos[92]—from the last
decade of pots in English printing. Except for its
engraved title and its map, the book is (according to one
way of looking at it) a gallery of tall and fancy pots, of
which one catches glimpses beside delightful engravings of
Lapps.
There are three pairs of pots and one unmated pot (in the
copies examined). The thing they all have in common is a
handle on the deckle or outer side, though some
inscriptions read in and some out. The commonest is a POT
P/DB, which always reads in. Its variants may be
distinguished by (a) a top crescent
violently wrenched to the right, and (b) letters slanting down. This last is
Heawood 3637, except that the upper D should be P: the
point can be checked in the companion mark. The letters
suggest the Debon family, with a mill (later) at St.
Bathélemy, between Sourdeval and Mortain (Manche).[93]
More attractive are the POTS R/GD, G/PR, and G/CH, all
ornamented with fleurs-de-lis top and base, in a late
Norman style. R/GD and G/PR prettily illustrate the
fashion of making the matching moulds so that one mark is
on the left side, one on the right; one reads in and one
out; one handle on the left side of its pot, one on the
other. I can hardly imagine a formaire planning all this and then affixing
one of the wireforms to its mould with letters reading the
wrong way—though that might happen later in the
mill. Pot G/CH occurs once in each copy, reading in (AHS
A2, ICU P2). As, judging by its good looks and supple
curves, it may have been shaped by the same artisan, its
companion when found may be expected to read
out—towards its handle and the deckle.
Reversal of pot handles occurs as early as 1640. A modest Pot
G/RO (for G. Rouxel?) appears among the mixed watermarks
in plays of Fletcher, Shirley, Habington (a pot folio)
printed by Thomas Cotes in that year. In this case one
mark reads up away from the handle,
and the other also up towards the
handle; so that both appear in the left halfsheet. I have noted examples in The Humorous Courtier (sheets B
F H I K), The Opportunitie
(B C),
The
Night-Walker (C H K), and
The Queene of Arragon (C1.4).
[94]
The name-abbreviation R/GD in Scheffer may be attributed to
the Guesdons, who had a mill or mills at Brouains, just
west of Sourdeval in Normandy, though some of the family
had migrated to Brittany by 1629.[95] Heawood 3591
may be a Guesdon pot. The meaning of G/PR is uncertain;
but G/CH suggests the Chastel family, which figures in a
pillar mark, H 3516. The G/CH pot is perhaps H 3685.
ARMS OF FRANCE & NAVARRE. Jonson, The
Works (T. Hodgkin, 1692). 2°. ICN, ICU.
Style of Heawood 663 or 670.
This is not the best edition of Jonson: only the one with the
best watermarks. It offers a pretty example of the
reversal of a coat of arms. The commonest marks in it show
the three fleurs-de-lis of France with the long label of
D. VAVLEGARD (style of H 635-636, 654), a maker of
Sourdeval or thereabouts.[96] But some sheets
show the combined escutcheons of France and Navarre in a
conventionalized form—the first with the three
fleurs-de-lis reduced to two fishlike bearings, the other
with the chains of Navarre in wheel-form. These appear in
the preliminaries and in the fourth alphabet carrying the
label of I. CONARD, whose mill may have been near
Vaulegard's. The striking difference among these marks is
that some have France on the left and Navarre on the right
(ICN & ICU A3) while others have the contrary
arrangement (ICN A6, ICU A3). All the labels read out, but
they differ in size and chain-position. The common pair
measure 8[58]12 and 12[65]1; but mixed with them seems to
be another pair measuring 22[62]13 and 12[65]23; which I
take to be evidence that two pairs of
moulds were in use on the same day at a pair of vats.
The book is a demy folio. The ICN copy is 14⅛ x 9''
(359 x 230 mm.), and the ICU (the poet Thomas Campbell's
copy) slightly smaller. The Oxford Pricelist of 1674 lists
"Durand Demy" with "on one side. 2 Scutcheons crowned
& bordered vnder it A DVRAND"; and the size given for the folded quire is 15 x
9¾''.[97] Study of the watermarks
in such volumes should improve our understanding of paper
sizes in the seventeenth century.
WHEEL or FLOWER WITHIN CIRCLES. Bartholomæus Anglicus,
De Proprietatibus Rerum, tr.
Trevisa (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1496]). 2°.
ICN. Briquet 6608, Heawood S36.
This article has found its argument mainly in
seventeenth-century
books printed in
England on Norman paper. It turns now to a famous book
printed in England on English-made paper: the
Bartholomæus of 1495 or 1496.
Ames, Jenkins, Briquet, Plomer have told the tale of John Tate
and his mill at Hertford.[98] How Henry VII
visited the mill; how Wynkyn de Worde referred to the mill
in verses at the end of De
Proprietatibus Rerum; how the miller became
Mayor of London or at least was the son of a Mayor. Enter
ye unromantick bibliographer
& taketh a looke at ye
paper.
Briquet did not look at it: he lifts his illustration from
Jenkins, and calls it "Fleur à 8 pétales,"
which may be right. Ames and Jenkins offer engine-turned
sophistications, Heawood a reduced tracing, all without
benefit of chains.[99] The mark is hard to see, behind two
columns of textura. Though two spokes of the Wheel of Tate
show between, centered neatly on a chain, the breadth of
the mark is hard to measure, and the attendant chains are
ambiguous. After much peering and turning of leaves, the
bibliographer decides he can distinguish two variants: one
with a bump on (the lower side of) its rim; the other with
circles unevenly spaced. Yet in most of the pages these
points are obscured, uncertain.
All the while he has missed a difference that can be seen at a
glance. Regardez les pontuseaux! In
one particular the two chain-patterns are remarkably
different. The normal chain-space, as in the unwatermarked
leaves (or halfsheets), is about 35 mm. but the spaces on
which the wheel is centered are 24-27 mm. (about an inch)
each. (No doubt these closer chains gave better support to
the watermark.) Now, the notable difference between the
moulds lies in the chain-space on the deckle side of the
attendant chains. In the sheets with the bumped rim this
outer space is the usual 35-36 mm. wide; but in the sheets
with the spread rim it is only 28-29 mm. wide. Thus,
whereas Wheel a measures
36:10[17:16]8:35 in, Wheel b
measures 28:8[16:17]8:36 in. These measurements are merely
approximate, of course, for the chains are not strictly
parallel. But the indicated difference of 7-8 mm. is
something anyone can see.
As I examined the handsome Britwell-Newberry copy,[100] my wonder grew. Here is a folio in
sixes and fours running through nearly three alphabets of
signatures—478 leaves, as Duff notes[101]—the paper of which was
manufactured on just one pair of moulds and imprinted by
Wynkyn de Worde
within a year of his
Vitas Patrum with its alleged
fifty marks. Than the Bartholomæus there are few
finer English-printed books, and few thicker folios with
just one paper all the way.
The Newberry Library also has a fragment of the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de
Varagine, which book Wynkyn de Worde dated 8 January 1497.
It is the only other book known to have been printed on
paper with the wheel (or star or flower) watermark of John
Tate. It is amusing to note that this fragment, consisting
of nine random leaves has five without marks and four with
wheels; and these four are divided two and two between the
two chain variants. There seems to be no deterioration in
the marks. Now looking back at the Bartholomæus I
count 51 instances of variant a and
48 of b (with one remargined and
uncertain) within the first alphabet and the first eleven
books. This is known as normal distribution.
This study has now been carried far enough to place in the
hands of bibliographers who work among books of particular
times and places. Some of its observations may thus grow
into generalizations; while others may suggest useful
analogies.
The student of early printed books may take heart from the
Bartholomæus: a case of filigranes
identiques which proves simple to analyze. He
may wish to begin with that incunabulum incunabulorum the
42-line Bible, whose three watermarks, as can be inferred
from the plates of Sotheby and Dziatzko,[102] are each from a pair of moulds.
The Bull's Heads differ in the spacing of the eyes, the
Grapes in size and stem (one looped and one cut), and the
Bullocks in the form of eye and tail. Though only three or
four copies seem to have been studied, it is at once
evident that pairs of moulds were in use at the inception
of printing by movable type.
Whether pairs of moulds were used from the beginning of
European papermaking is a question for those who live with
manuscripts. The oriental papermaker has always used a
single unwatermarked mould. Nor does twelfth-century
Spanish paper have watermarks; yet recurrent impressions
of wire defects may show whether two moulds were used
together at Xátiva. One of the earliest paper books
I have examined, a quarto manuscript of the Four Gospels
in Greek, "The Isaac Gospels," of the first half of the
fourteenth century, and owned by the University of Chicago
[BS 3552 1350], has thick, yellowish paper with two very
crude
watermarks: a pear or top-like
figure and a circle with a bar extending from it. But
their order in the volume does not make me certain that
they derive from companion moulds. A
mid-fourteenth-century manuscript at the Pierpont Morgan
Library,
Petri Alle-gherii super Dantis
ipsius genitoris Comœdiam Commentarium
[M 529] contains at least four varieties of a common early
Italian mark: Two Circles surmounted by a St. Andrew's
Cross. These seem to fall into two pairs, and may
represent paper produced at companion vats. Two Morgan
manuscripts of the fifteenth century naturally offer
clearer evidence. Gerbert de Montreuil's
Roman de la Violette [M 36] is an excellent
example of a manuscript written on a single
paper—with of course twin watermarks: an ordinary
Circle and Cross, one mark slanted, one level, within
chain-spaces of 40 and 42 mm. More attractive and varied
marks turn up in
L'Ystoyre du Saint
Graal abregée ("Escripte 1479") [M 38]:
a pair of Dogs with flowers and looped tails (one with the
flower 9 mm. from the head, the other with a larger flower
just 3 mm. from the head); a pair of Crowned Shields
quartered with the arms of the Dolphin; and others. Such
pairs of marks can usually be studied more readily in
manuscripts than in printed books; and Briquet is an
ever-present help. Thus from manuscripts on paper we may
learn something more concerning its manufacture in late
medieval times.
For the student of sixteenth and eighteenth-century books the
illustrations and analyses in these pages will suggest
parallel lines of study, though the primitive pots of 1525
have little in common with the ornate and spreading eagles
of 1775—except that the moulds were made in pairs.
Possibly the ten points of difference will dissolve some
mysteries of both centuries, or lead to techniques that
will. Such study should throw further light on the
original positions of wireforms, the nature and speed of
their deterioration, the manner of their resewing, the use
of two or more vats, and all consequent variations in a
stock of paper. In the long run we may know a good deal
about the life-story of watermarks.
It will be asked—it should and will!—what use it
is to know that watermarks like wrens go in pairs. This is
no time and place for a chapter on the bibliographical
significance of twin watermarks: that may come hereafter.
Yet it is evident at once that even the
negative implications of twin watermarks are important.
Though certain investigations may come to no harm through
treating
filigranes identiques as
the same mark,
[103] a bibliographer may
bring perplexity or disaster upon himself by supposing
that
filigranes divergentes imply
different reams or papermakers. He must take into
consideration even the possibility that twin watermarks
may differ in the names on their labels, bearing the names
of partners or of a husband and wife, or of a papermaker
and his factor.
[104] Certainly in the long
run it simplifies matters to pair off the papermarks that
belong together and that denote one consistent stock of
paper. The basic equation is: Two watermarks equal one
paper. It brings assurance and control into any study of
mixed watermarks which seeks to answer questions of
edition size, methods of press work, and time of printing.
My purpose has been to rid watermarks of one besetting
ambiguity.
On the positive side several uses or advantages have been
mentioned in these pages, and others can be found. It is
worth knowing that the Bartholomæus and the Pide
Bull Lear were machined
(apparently) in continuous printing
operations—though each has two watermarks. The
historian of paper will relish the inference that John
Tate's vatman and coucher applied themselves diligently at
a single vat for six weeks or so to provide sufficient
paper for a volume of nearly 500 leaves in an edition of
perhaps 500 copies. But admittedly the homogeneity of the
watermarks throws no light on the size of that edition,
except to suggest it was not large. The Shakespearian
quartos of 1619 have been touched on sufficiently to
suggest that a realization of the binary nature of their
watermarks in 1908 would have improved Greg's
demonstration that plays dated 1600 and 1619 were printed
in the same year. For no one would have argued that a pair of moulds might remain the
same (without distortion or resewing) over a score of
years, or that a mould-maker might have imitated the
subtle differences of
a
pair of watermarks in every
particular.
[105] The notes on the G
HVET label in
Paradise Lost and the
P/DB pot in
The History of Lapland
imply the importance of checking the lettering on the
companion marks if we wish to learn the exact sources of
paper. And from the investigation of geminate
case-histories begin to emerge facts which should prove
helpful in the analysis of books. In which halfsheet does
the watermark appear? Evidently the mould-artisan
sometimes affixed the wire-designs to the contrary halves
of a pair of
formes; and on
occasion someone at the mill inverted one or resewed them
both to the same end. Was paper piled consistently in
quires and reams? Resolution of a run of paper into its
component variants—noting the reversal of
pot-handles and of the bearings on escutcheons, the
differences of In and Out—reveals not infrequently a
marked consistency in the arrangement of sheets.
Such facts, such realizations serve also to sharpen
conventional uses of watermarks. If papermarks can be used
in dating (and their possibilities have been
overestimated), it may be important to watch for the
reappearance not of a watermark but of a pair of
watermarks. In cases of cancels or standing type, if the
authenticity of a leaf or sheet has been questioned
because of a mark "different" from marks in contiguous
sheets or other copies, the questioned mark may prove to
be the unappreciated mate of one of these. In the analysis
of quartos, where questions of conjunction arise, it is
hardly sufficient to point out that two related leaves
"show a watermark": they must show corresponding halves of
the same member of a pair. One suspects that T. J. Wise
and other purveyors of madeup play-quartos, while
complacently matching pot tops with pot bottoms, have
seldom distinguished between the marks that result from a
pair of moulds.[106]
Recognition of the true state of its watermarks brings the
dignity of individuality to each book printed on handmade
paper.
Forty years ago Falconer Madan
uttered his belief and warning:
"There
is no such thing as a duplicate." (Librarians
have scarcely heeded him.) We see new truth in his words.
In terms of mixed watermarks, twin watermarks, press
variants, cancels, and the gathering of sheets, every copy
of every book (above the rank of mere pamphlet) may be
expected to differ from all others. Even a thin
play-quarto "with one watermark throughout" yields
startling arithmetical combinations. The variant-patterns
soar into the millions and beyond.
Every
original copy of the Pide Bull Lear
was in all probability unique.
[107]