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Notes
Various writers have noted the mixture of watermarks in books. Dard Hunter says: "In examining old books a great profusion of watermarks may be noted in the paper of an individual volume, some fifteenth-century works containing a dozen or more different papermarks in a single book." [Papermaking: the History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, 2d ed. (1947), p. 261.] Thus William Blades speaks of "the astonishing variety of water-marks frequently found in one volume" of Caxton; and adds: ". . . there was a great intermixture of qualities [of paper], including the make of several mills. We have never yet seen one of Caxton's books in which the same watermark runs through the whole volume, and in many cases the variety is astonishing. Thus, in a copy of the first edition of the 'Canterbury Tales,' now in the library of Mr. Huth, there appear no less than fifteen distinct water-marks." [The Biography and Typography of William Caxton, 2d ed. (1882), pp. 97-98.] Recently the collector Edward Heawood has cited as examples of the "large number of different marks, often seen in a single book," Camden's Britannia (1637), Ogilby's Atlas Chinensis (1671), Fryer's New Account of East India and Persia (1698), and certain volumes printed in Italy, Holland, and Germany. [Watermarks Mainly of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Hilversum, 1950), p. 33.]
The 42-line Bible (c. 1456) contains three quite different watermarks: Bull's Head, Grapes, and Bullock, each with two variants. See Samuel Leigh Sotheby, The Typography of the Fifteenth Century, Being Specimens together with Their Watermarks (1845), pl. Z, no. 92; and Karl Dziatzko, Gutenbergs Früheste Druckerpraxis, Sammlung Bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Arbeiten, Heft IV (1890), pp. 41-50 and pl. III.
Samuel Leigh Sotheby, Principia Typographica to Which Is Added an Attempt to Elucidate the Character of the Paper Marks of the Period (1858), III, 102. Sotheby treats Caxton's watermarks at pp. 83-88 and pls. Qa-Qc.
On a suggestion of A. W. Pollard, Greg offered this hypothesis: "The middleman bought large stocks of paper from the manufacturer and sold comparatively small parcels of various sizes to printers. The inevitable result was that he was left with a number of oddments, remainders of various sizes, on his hands. These he simply stacked together and sold off cheap." [W. W. Greg, "On Certain False Dates in Shakespearian Quartos," Library, 2d ser., IX (1908), 395-396.] McKerrow concluded: ". . . it seems quite clear that many printers bought their paper in job-lots, and it is common to find a number of different watermarks in a book about the printing of which there appears to have been nothing abnormal." [Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography (1927), p. 101 n.] And in examining paper prices Marjorie Plant remarked: "It seems . . . as if the dealer was willing to sell off odd quires cheaply, and it may be for this reason that so many sixteenth-century books contain a number of different watermarks." [The English Book Trade (1939), p. 204.] But there was no reason to suppose that the varying prices applied to the same paper.
"New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence," [Studies in Bibliography], I (1948), esp. 152-163.
That a considerable part of the paper is Norman was shown by Edward Heawood in "Papers Used in England after 1600," Library, 4th ser., XI (1930-31), 263-299, 466-498, and "Further Notes on Paper Used in England after 1600," ibid., 5th ser., II (1947-48), 119-149. That the greater part of it was Norman and Norman-Breton I shall attempt to show in some "Notes on Norman Papermakers" now in preparation.
H. Bourde de la Rogerie cites evidence from official surveys that in the eighteenth century practically all mills in Brittany had just one vat each. See Les papeteries de la région de Morlaix, Contribution à l'histoire de la papeterie en France, VIII (Grenoble, 1941), esp. 57-61.
Published archives of the eighteenth century mention Julien Sagory "marchand-papetier à Morlaix," Yves Plassard "marchand papetier" apparently of the same place, and "Biard, marchand de papier et d'images à Brest." See Inventaire-sommaire des archives dèpartementales . . . finistere, B 4549, 4551, 4581. Nothing is known of such merchants in Normandy. In the seventeenth century there must have been English factors at Caen, Morlaix, and elsewhere. Nicolaï names some paper dealers and Dutch factors of the Angoumois. See Alexandre Nicolaï, Moulins à papier du sudouest de la France (Bordeaux, 1935), I, 49-50, 164, 170, 183.
Bourde de la Rogerie gives an account of many mills near Pleyber-Christ and Plourin, along the Jarlot and Queffleut just south of Morlaix [pp. 23 ff]. As late as the nineteenth century a writer in describing the valley of the Haute-Sée near Brouains and Sourdeval in Normandy speaks of "l'industrie qui a jeté mille usines à papier sur ses bords." [La Normandie illustrée (Nantes, 1852), II, pt. 6, 39.] Nicolaï lists clusters of mills along the Charreau, Boëme, and other streams below Angoulême [I, 154], and points out that the clusters had been larger before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685.
As in Raleigh's History of the World (1677) and Blome's Cosmography and Geography (1680-93). See Heawood, "Papers Used in England after 1600," p. 267; Watermarks, nos. 662, 663, 665a, 672, 678; and further examples can be cited.
The Oxford Pricelist of 1674 (among other evidence) shows that paper was imported from these three ports, of Normandy, Brittany, and the Angoumois respectively. See R. W. Chapman, "An Inventory of Paper, 1674," Library, 4th ser., VII (1926-27), 405-408.
Hunter, pp. 435-440. This is part of a very informative chapter on "Present-day Papermaking by Hand in Europe."
The deckle is the frame that fits the two moulds of a pair and limits the edges of the sheet. See Hunter, figs. 297, 301. By metonymy the word also means the rough edges of the sheet itself. For definitions of terms see E. J. Labarre, Dictionary and Encyclop&c.nt;dia of Paper and Paper-making, 2d ed. (Amsterdam, 1951).
The stay is the board to the left of the vatman on which he places the moulds for the coucher. Hunter, figs. 294, 305.
The bridge is the platform at the back of the vat along which the coucher returns the moulds to the vatman. Ibid., figs. 294, 298, 299, 305.
La Lande wrote: "Les operations . . . sont si promptes, qu'il se forme sept à huit feuilles par minute dans les grandeurs moyennes de papier, telle que la Couronne; en sorte qu'un Ouvrier peut faire huit rames dans la journée . . ." [Joseph Jérome Le Français de La Lande, Art de faire le papier, Institut de France, Académie des Sciences, Descriptions des arts et métiers. IV (Paris, 1761), 55.] Cf. Le Clert: "On estimait qu'un ouvrier, dans sa journée, pouvait faire de 7 à 8 rames de papier de 500 feuilles chacune, soit de 3500 à 4000 feuilles." [Louis Le Clert, Le Papier (Paris, 1926), I, 13.] Yet vatmen sometimes made even more. Schulte reckons that "Etwa 2500-3000 mal wird der Vorgang mit jeder Form täglich wiederholt . . ." [Alfred Schulte, "Papiermühlen- und Wasserzeichenforschung," Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1934 (Mainz, 1934), p. 22.]
Ibid, pp. 20-21. Hunter prefers the term divided mould, thus avoiding a confusion with double-size moulds but not distinguishing those furnished with tearingwires. [Hunter, pp. 229-231, figs. 199-200.]
E. J. Labarre, "De eerste schepzeef," Télé, III (1948), 233-236; translated as "An Interesting Find: An Historic Paper Maker's Mould," World's Paper Trade Review, CXXX (1948), 215-216, 218, 220, 256. I am grateful to Mr. Labarre for Dutch and English copies of this article.
Hunter, figs. 147, 148, 150, 179, 294, 304. The woodcut of 1568 by Jost Amman, fig. 146, shows but one mould, but also only part of the post.
Le Clert, I, 16. La Lande says [p. 49]: "Les formes & les couvertes se font dans toutes les Provinces où il y a des papeteries; en Auvergne c'est le métier propre d'un grand nombre de gens qu'on appelle Formaires; il y en a sur-tout beaucoup à Ambert. . . ." For an instructive modern photograph see Georges Degaast, "Les vieux moulins à papier d'Auvergne," Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1936 (Mainz, 1936), p. 11, fig. 3, "Le dernier 'formaire' d'Auvergne au travail."
Nicolaï mentions two such of the eighteeneth century, both of La Couronne, below Angoulême: Pierre Laroche, "Marchand papetier et faiseur de formes à papier," at Moulin de l'Abbaye 1734, and Michel Gaillard, "fabricant de papier et de formes à papier," at Moulin de Beauvais 1747-49. [I, 166, 176, 183-184.]
Sotheby, Principia Typographica, III, 15. "These dots are found frequently multiplied to a considerable extent in marks otherwise, to all appearance, of the same mould."
In measuring large watermarks, internal chains may be ignored, for chain-spaces (after 1500) tend to average 20 mm. Thus 7[73]4 measures a design spread over nearly four chain-spaces, and o[79]o one that just fits within four.
See e.g. Heawood 297-298, 633, 655 & 662, 943-944, 1494-95, 1518-19, 1541 & 1705, 1645, 1648-48a, 1868 & 1869a, 1878-79, 1972-73, 2079-79a, 2081-82, 2086-86a, 2234-35, 2236-36a, 2284-85, 2289-90, 2301, 2649, 3297 (bis), 3387, 3389, 3681-82. Most of these may represent pairs of moulds.
In this mark the letters C & P are spread over three chain-spaces of 65-66 mm. In variant a the back of the C and the front of the P touch or nearly touch the bounding lines; whereas in variant b the letters are fallen together so that they measure but 48 mm. across. In b the C is thinner and the P has a thicker stem. This mark Briquet would call a filigrane divergente.
Pp. 134, 164-166, 169. The book is printed on handmade paper made by Dard Hunter and in type cut and cast by Dard Hunter Jr. The prospectus states: "The many specimens of old line watermarks appearing as illustrations in each book have been made in the actual paper with the exact number of laid- and chain-lines, duplicating faithfully the original American watermarks in private and public collections."
For the German manuscript leaves I thank my student-friend Rudolph Jirgal of Chicago; for the endpapers Mr. D. F. Bogardus of the Huntington Library, who kindly gave me duplicates from his small collection of watermarked paper; for the watermarks of royal arms Mrs. Merle Boub of the University of Chicago Libraries, who called my attention to the blank volume on its arrival from England. The photographs are the work of Mr. Cabot T. Stein of the University of Chicago Department of Photographic Reproduction; and the halftones that of the Pontiac Engraving and Electrotype Co. of Chicago. There is an art in photographing and photoengraving fools and pots.
Robert H. Clapperton & William Henderson, Modern Paper Making (1929), figs. 122, 123; Hunter, Papermaking, figs. 94-97, 199-200, 220; Degaast, figs. 3, 4, 6.
That is, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: in incunabula the distance is often 30-40 mm. See Labarre, Dictionary, "Chain lines."
Fig. 4b shows a shield watermark with the date reversed. Among reversed shields note Heawood 583, 585, 587, 591, 596, &c.
Tranchefiles are extra wires at the ends of the moulds between the last rib and the frame. The term is from La Lande. For a bibliographical use of tranchefiles see Povey and Foster, "Turned Chain-lines," where they help to identify sheets with longitudinal chainlines made on double moulds.
Perhaps the initials PLG in Heawood 2929 are his; and several triplets in LG may denote the Legrand family.
Heawood, "Papers Used in England after 1600," pp. 266, 267, 279; "Further Notes," p. 125; Watermarks, no. 440[?]. The name Pallix occurs at Beauchêne, a town between Tinchebray and Domfront (Orne), where the papermill of Michel Le Jeune appears to have been situated. See Bourde de la Rogerie, p. 22; and Inventaire-sommaire des archives dèpartementales . . . manche, A 1930.
Robert Sanderson, A Discourse concerning the Church (T. B. for R. Taylor, 1688), 4°. In my copy the fool appears three times—in sheets B C D—without his twin turning up.
That they are mates, however, is made apparent by their being from one of two sets of endpapers removed by the binder from similar volumes. Mr. Bogardus kindly parted with the duplicates.
Perhaps this paper was the manufacture of the White Paper Company, formed in England in 1686 by Nicholas Dupin with French and English associates for the making of "all sorts of writeing and printing paper, and to imprint our arms upon such paper." The Company benefited from the art of Huguenot workmen exiled to England by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; and its charter ran to 1704 or after. See Rhys Jenkins, "Paper-making in England, 1682-1714," Library Association Journal, III (1901), 240-246.
It may have been prepared for someone at Court. The initials IP stamped on the binding may stand for John Palmer of Torrington, Devonshire, if, as Seymour de Ricci suggests, he formed the Bibliotheca Palmeriana. [English Collectors of Books & Manuscripts (1530-1930) (1930), pp. 48-49.]
Heawood, "Papers Used in England after 1600," p. 270; "Further Notes," p. 125; Watermarks, nos. 592, 2254 (full name), 3596, 2616.
Published archives mention "Énchantillons des papiers de la généralité de Caen . . . le 3 septembre 1765: . . . grand royal à la grappe, fabriqué par . . . Michel Vaulegeard, à Sourdeval". [Inventaire-sommaire des archives départementales . . . calvados, C 2903.]
W. W. Greg, The Variants in the First Quarto of 'King Lear' (1940); Fredson Bowers, "An Examination of the Method of Proof Correction in Lear," Library, 5th ser., II (1947-48), 20-44; Philip Williams, "The Compositor of the 'Pied Bull' Lear," [Studies in Bibliography], I (1948), 61-68; and several reviews and discussions of these.
In 1908 Greg noted that the Pied Bull Lear does not "contain any of the same marks as the Pavier volume" of 1619. ["On Certain False Dates," p. 123 n.]
Incidence of the variants in the Huntington and New York copies: a: CSmH: C2.3 D2.3 F1.4 H3.2; NN: C4.1 F1.4 G1.4 K1.4. b: CSmH: B4.1 E2.3, G2.3, I1.4, K4.1, L4.1, A-.2 (tp); NN: B2.3 D1.4 E2.3 H4.1 I1.4 L2.3. In each instance the leaf with the pot top is given first. The handle is consistently out (on the deckle side).
As Lear was entered on 26 November 1607, presumably it was printed within the first half of 1608. The only other play printed by Nicholas Okes in 1607-8 is Markham and Machin's Dumbe Knight (1608), which was not entered until 6 October 1608 and has no pots in common with Lear (CSmH copies).
The R/LM pots are those whose slight variations were discussed by Greg and Huth. [Alfred H. Huth, "Shakespeare's Quartos," Academy, LXXIV (1908), 864-865; W. W. Greg, ibid., pp. 889-890; "On Certain False Dates," pp. 386-390; Huth, "The Shakespeare Quartos," Athenœum, No. 4239 (1909), 101; Greg, ibid., No. 4240 (1909), 132.] Actually, the most apparent distinction between the R/LM twins is not a minute difference in the size of their bases but a difference of four millimeters (19, 23) in the width of their chain-spaces. This is an excellent illustration of the third point of difference. The pot with wide chains also has a plainly bent center lobe. Besides the six 1619 quartos named by Greg ["On Certain False Dates," Table I], this Pot R/LM occurs in Henry V (ICN).
The Guesdons had a mill at Brouains, near Sourdeval (Manche). See Bourde de la Rogerie, p. 21; cited (with errors) by Edward Heawood, "Paper Used in England after 1600," Library, 5th ser., III (1948-49), 142. The Richard Guesdon mentioned by Bourde de la Rogerie went to Morlaix around 1630; but a Julien Guesdon still had a mill at Brouains in 1765. [Inventaire-sommaire des archives départementales . . . calvados, C 2903.] But another possibility is the Rondel family; cf. Heawood 1973.
Printed by J. Barnes. The Huntington copy has a different three-lion shield in its map, with P [tower] D in place of the date.
Some of these are dated 1610 and have interesting variants. See my "Shakespearian Dated Watermarks," later in this volume.
The largest page measurements recorded by Bowers and Davis are 341 and 222 mm.—or 13.4 and 8.7"—which agrees with the Oxford Pricelist mean of 13¾ x 9¼" for a folded quire of crown paper. See Fredson Bowers and Richard Beale Davis, George Sandys: A Bibliographical Catalogue of Printed Editions in England to 1700 (1950), pp. 31-32; and Chapman, pp. 405-407.
ICU has three lions on large shields in thick paper for the plates to Books 3, 4, 15; three lions on smaller shields in thin paper for the plates to Books 5, 6, 7, 14; with the remaining plates unwatermarked (that for Book 9 wanting). It also has three-lion shields in the text at 2T1, 2V3, 2V4, 2X2, 3V2. Cf. certain Virginia, Clark, and Huntington copies described in Richard Beale Davis, "George Sandys v. William Stansby: The 1632 Edition of Ovid's Metamorphosis," Library, 5th ser., III (1948-49), 208-209.
Bowers and Davis, p. 31. One or more of the fine-paper copies listed by Stansby [Davis, pp. 198-199] may yet come to light. They will not necessarily be taller copies, for the crowned shield with fess and three lions clearly was a way of marking fine crown paper. Cf. the discussion of the plates in Camden's Britannia (1910), above.
Harris F. Fletcher, ed., John Milton's Complete Poetical Works Reproduced in Photographic Facsimile, II (1945), 120.
Where the mills of Normandy used pots, fools, and crowns rather systematically to mark pot, foolscap, and crown paper, the mills of Brittany appear to have used a variety of marks in these sizes. This my experience is borne out by the Oxford Pricelist of 1674 [Chapman, pp. 407-408], which gives marks and sizes and prices for both Caen and Morlaix papers of these sorts. The Morlaix prices are regularly lower, though for reams of 24-sheet quires.
Francis Bacon, Resuscitatio (S. Griffin, 1657), 2C1 (ICU); John Ogilby, The Relation of His Majestie's Entertainment (T. Roycroft, 1661), D2 (variant a), G1 (variant b) (CSmH). This thin Ogilby folio, like the Paradise Lost, also has the initials PH, in a pair.
J. Lemoine & H. Bourde de la Rogerie, eds., Inventaire-sommaire des archives départementales . . . finistere, Série B, III (Quimper, 1902), cxciv; Bourde de la Rogerie, Les papeteries de la région de Morlaix, p. 28.
Cf. "New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence," pp. 155-158, 161-163. So diverse are the watermarks in the Cotes plays of 1640 that it was (luckily) not necessary to distinguish pairs of watermarks for the purposes of that article. See n. 15, p. 156: the Jesus and bird watermarks have now resolved themselves into pairs, and their association would seem to be that of companion vats.
Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities, augmented by William Herbert, I (1785), 200-201, or ed. Thomas Frognall Dibden, II (1812), 320-321; Rhys Jenkins, "Early Attempts at Paper-making in England, 1495-1586," Library Association Record, II (1900), 481-484; Briquet, II, 373; Henry R. Plomer, Wynkyn de Worde & His Contemporaries (1925), pp. 55-56.
Ames, ed. Herbert, I, 200; ed. Dibden, II, 321; Jenkins, II, 481; Heawood, "Sources of Early English Paper-supply," Library, 4th ser., X (1929-30), no. 36. The latter notes the mark in a Paston letter of 1495 [p. 292].
It measures 11⅞ x 8'' or 303 x 205 mm. It is in excellent condition, except that certain preliminary leaves are in facsimile or carefully remargined.
Sotheby, Typography of the Fifteenth Century, III, pl. Z, no. 92; Dziatzko, Guten-bergs Früheste Druckerpraxis, pl. III. Briquet distinguishes the two grape watermarks as 13,040 and 13,009.
Le Clert notes [I, 16]: "Les formes étaient fabriquées non seulement pour les fabricants de papier, mais aussi pour des marchands qui y faisaient apposer leurs marques ou filigranes et les remettaient ensuite aux papetiers chargés d'exécuter leur commandes." James Wardrap notes an instance of "sheets watermarked alternately W BALSTON and J WHATMAN," in 1810. See "Mr. Whatman, Papermaker," Signature, No. 9 (July 1938), 18 n.
Sir Walter Greg examined an early nineteenth-century mould and neatly disposed of Huth's contention that the watermarks themselves may have been moulded, rather than formed separately of wires. See W. W. Greg, "The Shakespeare Quartos," Athenœum, No. 4239 (1909), 100-101. As we have seen, various writers testify to the impossibility of making two wireforms exactly alike.
For Wise's industry in making books "perfect" see Letters of Thomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn, ed. Fannie E. Ratchford (1944), pp. 77, 301, 396, 454, 458.
Collation: A2 B-K4. Sir Walter Greg found in twelve copies seven formes variant, each in a different sheet. [the Variants in the First Quarto of 'King Lear', ch. II.] Not counting second corrections in inner C or an altered catchword in inner K, and assuming equal numbers of uncorrected and corrected sheets (the totals being 42 and 46 among extant copies), that means 27 or 128 possible combinations within an edition of perhaps 1000 copies. But consider the watermarks. One paper with twin watermarks in 9 1/2 sheets means 210 or 1024 possible combinations, enough to allow a different watermark sequence for each copy. And now it may be pointed out that a pot can have its top or base in any one of the four leaves of a quarto gathering—and the pots so vary in position in examined copies of Lear. And even in an unwatermarked halfsheet the chain-pattern varies. Thus, in this simplest of cases, with only a third of the formes known to be variant and with only one pair of "identical" watermarks so far found, the possible combinations work out roughly as 27 x 210 x 410 = 237 = 137,438,954,000. What chance is there for a duplicate Pide Bull among so many? What chance? If such is the case with single-paper books, then what of books printed on a variety of papers, books with mixed watermarks! Clearly the possible combinations are astronomical, even if we assume only one or two pairs of marks within each edition-sheet. Let the reader perpend (if it does not terrify him) the case of the St. Jerome Vitas Patrum of Wynkyn de Worde with its fifty watermarks—whether this number includes pairs or not. He will need a ream of white paper for his problem, and a jar of paste.
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