Item 22 - Letter from Edward Heawood to R. B. McKerrow

2 single sheets

Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, London, S.W.7.—Has been reading An Introduction to Bibliography. Communicates some notes on the position of watermarks, etc.

(Not posted till the 27th. See Add. MS 355/4/23.)

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Transcript

Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, London S.W.7
Feb. 25 1928

Dear Sir
I am reading with much interest your book on Bibliography and as a Student of Watermarks have noted especially what you say about the help given by such marks towards determining the format of books. As you speak of certain obscurities respecting abnormal positions of the marks, you might possibly be interested to have a few notes which I have made on the subject, though I have not yet brought them together at all systematically.

I have some examples at least of an exactly central position in the sheet, but the only one that occurs to me at the moment is in Rivinus: ‘Introductio … in Rem Herbarium’ (Leipzig 1690-91) a largish folio with the chain-lines normal. It is interesting as an instance (not a solitary one) of paper made specially for a book, the mark being D.A.Q.R., which letters, standing for D. Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, appear also printed on the title-p. to Vol. 2. I have a good many examples of a position near the edge of the sheet, {1} from papers probably made in Central or Southern France, e.g. from the Ptolemy’s of 1535 and 1541 edited by Servetus, a small Strabo printed at Lyon in 1559, and in Billingsley’s Euclid of 1570. A much less common arrangement is that in which mark and counter-mark are in the upper and lower halves of the same ½ sheet (I have no dated ex. of this) and there is a mark of the Dutch maker Adriaan Rogge (late 18th cent.) in which two elephants face each other in the centres of the half-sheets and the maker’s monogram is in the centre. I have once found the date of a French 18th cent. paper placed centrally at the top of the sheet, mark and counter-mark being in the usual positions. Another abnormal case is that of a paper made in France by G. Dalençon (c. 1750) which has the mark repeated four times in the four quarters of the same half-sheet.* [Footnote: ‘*Instances of two fairly elaborate marks, one in each half of the sheet, are sometimes found—I mean entirely different marks.’]

You tentatively suggest 1670 as about the date when countermarks began to appear. I have found them however fairly often from quite early in that century, mostly if not always in con-junction with the bunch of grapes on French papers. They occur thus, e.g., in Camden’s Britannia of 1607, Speed’s Theatrum of 1616 (and later), and in Milton’s Commonplace book at the Brit. Museum. The countermark may be the maker’s name in full or merely initials. (A countermark in the corner is of course common in Venetian paper at a much earlier date.)

As to the direction of the chain lines, I have found an apparent case of horizontal direction (on the sheet) in Cluver’s† {2} ‘Introd. ad Universalem Geographiam’, Amsterdam, 1697, to all appearance a 4to volume (leaf, cut, 9¼ x 7") and with the watermark (the monogram ICH {3}) in the normal position for a quarto. Even were the book a large 8vo cut down at the top & bottom, the mark would be in an abnormal position, and besides there are chain-lines closer than in the sheet as a whole near both outer edges of the sheets as folded, showing that it is not a case of half-sheets gathered in fours.

I hope I have not wearied you with these remarks; which may not contain anything that you do not know well already. I thought that the above specific instances might be of some interest.

Yours very truly
Edward Heawood

I have several thousands of water-mark tracings, and should be only too glad if they could be found of use in connection with any bibliographical puzzle.

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{1} A page ends here. Followed by ‘P.T.O.’

{2} McKerrow has written in the margin, ‘P. Cluvier’.

{3} The three letters are written one above the other.