Watermarks reflect the very stuff of the origin, date, distribution, composition, history, and culture of paper-based items. Digital imaging of watermarks releases the research potential as widely as the internet itself. One example is the digital "fingerprinting" of paper in order to enhance the security of items, such as valuable and vulnerable maps. Revealing Watermarks offers detailed instructions of this process, through the author's own PaperPrint method, and by means of the case study of a sixteenth-century watermark – a crown from the arms of Danzig – it illustrates how cultural influences spread and have endured across the centuries, in this case from Sweden to Russia.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I.
PaperPrint—Security
Method
The Lindley Library and Other Examples of PaperPrint in Use
II.
Paper, Pages, and Finding Watermarks
How to Reveal Watermarks
Imaging Procedure
Image Processing and Archiving
III.
Case Study—Lithuania to Russia and Sweden—Cultural—the Danzig Connection
IV.
Case Study—Estonia—Number of Pages
V.
Composition and Dating
Downloads
Bibliography
Index
Ian Christie-Miller was a NATO interpreter and RAF Search and Rescue pilot before becoming a teacher. His London PhD research into French sixteenth-century Kabbalism led to the invention of the Early Book Imaging System and to the development of digital imaging techniques as now used for revealing watermarks. It also lead to the publication of his Traicté de la Cabale (Honoré Champion, Paris, 2007), followed by a series of online and printed works mainly about sixteenth-century religious texts.