In 1994, a rare watermark album assembled in the first half of the nineteenth century by Canon Ludwig von Büllingen (1771–1848), entered the collection of the NGV. Von Büllingen was a clergyman and scholar of letterpress printing in Cologne, with an impressive personal collection of manuscripts, printed books and incunabula (books printed prior to 1500). His scholarly legacy includes cataloguing the immense book collection of Canon Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (now in the Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne) and writing Annales typographici Colinienses, a five-volume bibliography of letterpress printers operating in Cologne from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.1Annales typographici Colinienses was supplemented with samples of printing, title pages from books and watermarks in paper used by the main printers working in Cologne over the period. See Thomas-Archiv Kempen (thomas-archiv-online.de). I am indebted to Marika Strohschneider, Senior Conservator, NGV, for translating this site. During the French Revolution, many cathedrals in Cologne and their contents were destroyed. Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was a prodigious collector who was committed to preserving what art and artefacts he could during this tumultuous time.
The von Büllingen album originally contained almost five hundred European paper fragments, each bearing a watermark.2Subsequent owners added 136 additional paper fragments bearing watermarks, photographic images and tracings of watermarks. Before the Industrial Revolution, paper was made by hand, with each sheet being formed on a timber frame called a mould, which was covered with metal wires running across and down the frame. From the thirteenth century, it was customary to stitch a design fashioned from wire (referred to as a wire profile) onto the surface of the mould, and these designs carried meanings such as the size of the paper sheet, the quality of the paper or where the paper was made.
Papermaking mould with an acorn wire profile, made by Serge Pirard, paper mouldmaker, Belgium. This traditional papermaking mould was kindly purchased from the NGV’s Supporters of Conservation Projects fund and is part of the NGV’s Conservation Material Archive.
The mould was plunged into a vat of pulp that contained fibres such as hemp, flax and cotton. The fibres settled between the wires and around the wire profile, meaning the paper is thinner in these areas. When the paper is held up to light (referred to as transmitted light), the wire profile design is often clearly visible and is referred to as a watermark. The von Büllingen album provides a snapshot of watermark design in Europe across five centuries while offering an insight into the history of papermaking and the paper trade across Europe.
The blue paper pages of the album bear an SN 1814 watermark. This date places the paper as being made when von Büllingen was forty-three years old, thirty-four years before his death.3It may have been several years after the paper was made that it was bound into book form and von Büllingen started work on the assembly of the album. It has been suggested the von Büllingen album would have been completed before 1821, when he began devoting his time to cataloguing the Wallraf Collection.4Gernot Gabel & Wolfgang Schmitz (eds), Cologne Collectors and their Book Collections in the University and City Library of Cologne: Scholars, Diplomats, Entrepreneurs, University and City Library, Cologne, 2003, p. 35. Each watermark was cut from an original manuscript, incunable, early musical score or printed book using scissors and traced over with pencil prior to being accentuated with pen and ink to articulate the design. If known, the date and origin of the source material was written underneath.
A manuscript with a unicorn watermark, viewed with transmitted light. The unicorn is depicted bound by a chain because unicorns were believed to be the strongest of all animals and very dangerous.
On some samples, sewing holes accompanied by creases are visible, indicating von Büllingen was not simply cutting watermarks out of pages, he was also disbinding books to assemble his collection.
Tracing of a thirteenth to fourteenth-century crest watermark on a musical score. Note the horizontal crease relating to the previous binding of the page.
Canon von Büllingen may have been familiar with the work of Samuel Engel (1702– 84), the chief librarian of the Berne Municipal Library, thought to be one of the first scholars to see the potential of using watermarks to help date manuscripts and printed material.5Johann Lindt, The paper-mills of Berne and their watermarks, Monumenta chartæ papyraceæ historiam illustrantia, vol. 10, Paper Publications Society, Hilversum, 1964, p. 58. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, interest in watermarks grew and their study was considered an ancillary science to fields such as history and palaeography. Researchers and collectors based in various countries including Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and England produced publications incorporating watermarks. If von Büllingen had access to references such as these, they may have guided his approach to laying out his album, which is arranged by emblem type, each specimen adhered to the page.
While it is disconcerting to picture von Büllingen disbinding books and cutting into pages to extract watermarks, this potential reality is slightly softened by the fact he was primarily sourcing material from his private library. Von Büllingen donated the so-called ‘Büllingen Collection’ to the City of Cologne in 1838, ten years before he died, and it is now in the Collection of the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek (USB), Cologne. In addition to removing watermark samples from his own collection, he sourced some material from the Gymnasialbibliothek in Cologne, where he was acquainted with the librarian, Franz Pape.6I am indebted to Nadine David, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek (USB), Cologne, for providing me with this information. The holdings of the Gymnasialbibliothek were sourced from various secularised monasteries and three Cologne high schools, and their collections were dominated by Jesuit and philosophical works. See Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln, Gymnasialbibliothek, Universität Zu Köln, https://www.ub.uni-koeln.de/sammlungen/gymnasialbibliothek/index_ger.html, accessed 25 Mar. 2021.
The von Büllingen album includes watermarks from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the Netherlands dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. The paper specimens reveal much about improvements in wire production techniques across the centuries and the impact this had on mould design and wire profile construction. For example, the album includes simple, early designs fashioned from thick wire, such as a fourteenth-century specimen of two orbs bisected by a cross and an example of the complex Three Kings or Three Magi watermark, which represents the heights wire profile design reached in the seventeenth century.7The paper specimens also contain the marks of their making, providing insights into the raw materials available for papermaking and the development of beating techniques.
Watermark of two orbs surmounted by a cross, dated 1363 in von Büllingen’s handwriting, viewed with transmitted light. The wire used to make the profile is thick and von Büllingen traced around it rather than being able to use a single pen line to record it.
The Three Kings watermark viewed under transmitted light. This symbol is particularly connected to Cologne, where the tomb of the Three Kings is placed behind the high altar of the Cologne Cathedral.8I am grateful to Dr Frieder Schmidt for alerting me to the connection between Cologne and the Three Kings symbol.
The album contains many different designs, including more than seventy heraldic arms of Swiss, German, French, Italian, English and Dutch origin dating from 1580 to 1709. It has been possible to identify some of these emblems, such as the Arms of France, Arms of Berne and Arms of Freiburg, and crests including those belonging to the House of Medici and the Duchy of Cleves.
An album page devoted to heraldic arms and crests, including the Arms of Baden, surmounted by antlers (top row, fourth from left); the crest of the Duchy of Cleves, divided into quarters with rampant lions in the upper quarters (fourth row on left); and the Arms of Strasbourg, charged with fleur-de-lis and surmounted by a cross (fifth row on left).
Two pages are devoted to foolscap watermarks. These symbols represent court jesters and the examples in the album date from 1479 to 1742. The jester is always depicted in profile, usually wearing a cap adorned with several bells and a collar with either five, seven or nine points. Those with seven points are thought to have been made by French paper mills for the export market.9Edward Heawood, ‘Watermarks: Mainly of the 17th and 18th centuries’, Monumenta chartæ papyraceæ historiam illustrantia vol. 1, Paper Publications Society, Hilversum, 1970, p. 24.
The foolscap emblem came to represent a specific size of paper manufactured for printing and writing. Indeed, the term ‘foolscap’ is still used to describe a particular paper size.
Some emblems may indicate the origin of the paper. For example, the pine tree watermarks in the album are symbolic of Nuremberg and other parts of Bavaria, and encircled emblems such as the anchor are particularly associated with early Italian paper.
This pine tree watermark is associated with the Oberfichtenmühle (pine tree mill) near Schwabach, approximately sixteen kilometres south of Nuremberg.10E. J. Labarre (ed.), The Nostitz Papers: Notes on watermarks found in the German imperial archives of the 17th and 18th centuries, and essays showing the evolution of a number of watermarks, Monumenta chartæ papyraceæ historiam illustrantia; vol. 5, Paper Publications Society, Hilversum, 1956, p. 117.
An anchor in a circle with bilateral flukes and a pendant heart. The encircling of emblems was a distinctive feature of Italian paper up until the seventeenth century, when other European countries started to copy this design feature.11Heawood, p. 28.
However, watermark designs cannot be relied on to determine the origin of a particular paper. A small collection of bears dating from 1500 to 1550 is probably from Berne, although Bernese paper with the bear watermark was known for its high quality and for this reason it was copied by other mills in Switzerland, France and Germany.12Lindt, p. 56.
The Arms of Berne with bend, charged with a bear and surmounted by a crown, dated 1553.13This date was written on the specimen by Robert Sticht. Viewed with transmitted light.
Having catalogued the Wallraf collection, von Büllingen would have been acquainted with Johann Anton Ramboux (1790–1866), conservator and curator of the Wallraf Collection from 1843 to 1866.14Freya Probst, ‘Ramboux, Johann Anton’, Grove Art Online, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000070659, accessed 29 Mar. 2021. Ramboux studied painting in Paris under the instruction of Jacques Louis David, and was an avid collector and restorer of historic monuments.15 ibid.
Léon-Mathieu Cochereau (France, 1793-1817), The Studio of Jacques-Louis David 1814, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
After von Büllingen died in 1848, Ramboux purchased the album from the von Büllingen estate. His interest in it is likely to have been linked to his collection of woodcuts, etchings, engravings and incunabula. In addition to using the album as a reference, Ramboux contributed an elaborate watermark of a mermaid to one of its pages.16Irmgard Hiller et al., Johann Anton Ramboux Maler und Konservator 1790–1866, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, 1967, p. 68. I am indebted to Dr Petra Kayser, Curator, Prints and Drawings, NGV, for translating this catalogue for me.
A historic manuscript fragment, written in German with the name Ramboux written under the text, indicating it was added to the album by Johann Anton Ramboux. The watermark depicts a mermaid, viewed under transmitted light, and the paper is possibly of Spanish origin.
In 1866, Ramboux succumbed to cholera and his art collection and library (including the von Büllingen album) was sold by Lempertz auction house in Cologne.17I am grateful to Nadine David, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek (USB), Cologne, for bringing this auction to my attention. Personal correspondence, 23 Mar. 2021. See also ‘Johann Anton Ramboux’, National Gallery of Art, Johann Anton Ramboux (nga.gov) accessed 26 Mar. 2021. Inscriptions and ephemeral material slipped into the album ultimately helped trace the provenance of the von Büllingen album from the Lempertz auction in 1867 to 1997, when it entered the NGV Collection.
A label adhered to the front paste-down confirms Nicholas Trübner (1817–84) owned the album in the 1870s, indicating he may have been the successful bidder at the Lempertz auction.18The archive of Lempertz auction house was destroyed during the Second World War, so it has not been possible to confirm whether Trübner purchased the album at the 1867 sale. I am grateful to Karl-Heinz Knupfer, Venator & Hanstein, Cologne, for providing me with this information. Personal correspondence, 26 Mar. 2021. In 1831, Trübner became involved in the book trade, working initially for the house of Mohr in Heidelberg, followed by stints at other German book dealers before being offered a position with the publisher William Longman in London.
The label bearing Trübner’s name relates to the Caxton Celebration Exhibition of 1877, an event staged to mark 400 years since the first printed book was published in England by William Caxton. Trübner was a member of the exhibition sub-committees responsible for the ‘Curiosities and Miscellanies’ and ‘Paper and Paper-making’ classes, and incorporated several items from his own collection into the display, including the von Büllingen album.19George Bullen (ed.), Caxton Celebration 1877 Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Antiquities, Curiosities, and Appliances Connected with the Art of Printing South Kensington, Elzevir Press, London, p. XV. See https://archive.org/stream/catalogueofloanc00caxtrich#page/470/mode/2up/search/trubner, accessed 14 Dec. 2020. I am indebted to Julia Jackson, former Cataloguer, NGV, for providing me with this reference. Trübner contributed a lengthy description of the album to the exhibition catalogue, writing:
Collection of Ancient Water-Marks formed by Canon von Büllingen, consisting of 474 specimens, among which 64 varieties of the bull’s head; 34 of Gothic P; 14 of the crown; 53 of the snake and staff; 12 of the hand; and 32 of the foolscap, &c., &c. The earliest specimens go back to 1363, the crescent and the cross; two orbs and the cross; and the crossbow, neither of which is figured by Sotheby. The bull’s head commences with 1390; the Gothic P with 1486; the crown with 1476; the foolscap with 1479; and coat of armour, crests, &c., date from an early period. The whole of the water-marks have been care-fully covered in ink by Canon von Büllingen.20Bullen, p. 471.
It is interesting to note Trübner’s claim that the earliest watermark examples in the album are not included in Sotheby. He was possibly referring to Samuel Leigh Sotheby’s ambitious publication, which includes tracings of many watermarks with similarities to those found in the von Büllingen album.21Samuel Leigh Sotheby, Principia typographica. The block-books, or xylographic delineations of scripture history; issued in Holland, Flanders and Germany, during the fifteenth century, exemplified and considered in connexion with the origin of printing. To which is added an attempt to elucidate the character of the paper-marks of the period, 1858. See https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015084630287&view=1up&seq=5&skin=2021, accessed 12 Dec. 2020. Trübner’s detailed description of the album, noting the typology and number of the various marks and comparing it with Sotheby, indicates Trübner spent considerable time studying it.
Inscription on the front flyleaf of the album written in the bold handwriting of Thomas McCall Fallow.
Trübner’s detailed description was copied verbatim in bold, neat handwriting onto the front flyleaf of the album. Other examples of this writing are scattered throughout the album, most notably on items of ephemera relating to papermaking and experimental photographs attempting to capture watermarks. This handwriting has been traced to the third owner of the album, Reverend Thomas McCall Fallow (1847–1920) of Coatham, Yorkshire. Fallow attended St John’s College in Cambridge, becoming a scholar of archaeology.22I am indebted to Sylvia Thomas, Honorary Collections Liaison Officer, Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society Archives, and Claire Morton, Customer Services Assistant Manager, Leeds University Library, for providing me with images of verified samples of Thomas McCall Fallow’s handwriting. J. Cowley Fowler (ed.), Proceedings of the Cleveland Naturalist Field Club, 1910–1911, vol. III, part 1, A. Brown & Sons, Limited, Hull, 1913, p. 1. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and vice-president and secretary of the Archaeological Section of the Cleveland Naturalists Field Club, and wrote Memorials of Old Yorkshire.23ibid. It was said, ‘Anything he took up he threw his whole life and soul into’.24ibid. As editor of The Antiquary: An illustrated magazine devoted to the study of the past, Fallow was likely the author of a review of William Blades’ Enemies of Books in the magazine that observed:
The writer is in possession of a collection of old water-marks which once belonged to Mr. Trübner, and were exhibited at the Caxton Exhibition. These have been cut out of pages of old service books and other works, from the beginning of printing to the present century. Each one of these small scraps of paper tells a sad tale, that for the sake of securing it in an album, a certain ‘Cannon von Bullingen’ destroyed no less than five hundred old books of various kinds, the majority of which were printed prior to the year 1500!25The Antiquary: A magazine devoted to the study of the past, vol. XXXIII, Jan–Dec. 1897, p. 72. I am indebted to Julia Jackson, former Cataloguer, NGV, for locating this reference.
Fallow added additional watermarks to the album in the form of traditional tracings on tracing paper, mock-ups prepared for publication in The Antiquary, several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century flyleaves bearing watermarks, and experimental albumen prints showing his attempts to capture watermarks using photographic techniques.
Albumen print of a Pro Patria or Brittania watermark design enhanced by tracing, produced by Thomas McCall Fallow. This watermark image was taken from the flyleaf of a book bound in England circa 1730. There were many foreign imitations of this Dutch watermark, including several versions produced by English paper mills.
These watermarks with inscriptions written by Thomas McCall Fallow were reproduced in an article written by Miss E. Thoytes entitled ‘Watermarks on Paper’, published in The Antiquary, November 1895.
Fallow’s transcription on the album’s flyleaf was later annotated in the neat, minute handwriting of another owner. The assertion the watermarks had been ‘carefully’ covered in ink was corrected to ‘very care-lessly’ by the pencil-wielding inscriber. The same handwriting appears on many loose specimens in the album and page markers noting the location of the various watermark symbols, their probable date and origin. The markers were written on letterhead reading ‘Penghana’, the Tasmanian residence of Robert Carl Sticht (1856–1922), the last owner of the album prior to it entering the NGV Collection.
An album page devoted to Gothic P emblems. Some are conjoined, with the letter Y forming the bifurcated stem. These motifs may represent Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy from 1419 to 1467, and his third wife Isabelle, who he married in 1430. Note the page markers on the lower right, which are inscribed by Robert Sticht.
Sticht was a mining and metallurgical engineer who immigrated to Tasmania from the United States to work at the Mount Lyell copper mine in Queenstown. A highly regarded metallurgist, he was also an avid collector of artefacts, books and art, and maintained fastidious records of his collection, which are preserved at State Library Victoria. The catalogue of Sticht’s library details books on typography, printing, bookbinding and print collecting, and practical treatises on drawing, painting and papermaking.26Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, ‘James Tregaskis’, https://aba.org.uk/page/james-tregaskis, accessed 15 Dec. 2020. Sticht purchased the von Büllingen album from James Tregaskis, a book and art dealer who produced beautiful catalogues and held exhibitions at his London shop, Caxton Head.
Robert Sticht in his study. Tasmanian Archives: NS 193/1/3.
Sticht spent considerable time researching the origins of the watermarks in the von Büllingen album, comparing them to examples in his set of Charles Moise Briquet’s Les Filigraines: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier des leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en en 1600, published in 1907.27This key watermark reference contains over 16,000 watermark tracings taken from papers found in numerous European collections. Briquet’s information about European paper trade and the probable origin of thousands of watermarks enabled Sticht to inscribe a Briquet reference number, date and country of use on many of von Büllingen’s tracings.
Sticht also attempted to make the album a more useful watermark reference by removing numerous watermarked fragments from the album pages and immersing them in aqueous solutions, in the hope of removing von Büllingen’s ink lines that covered the watermarks. Both chlorine and oxalic acid were recommended to book collectors in the nineteenth century for removing unwanted ink inscriptions.28Christine Smith, Yours Respectfully, William Berwick: Paper Conservation in the United States and Western Europe, 1800–1935, Legacy Press, Ann Arbor, 2016, p. 168. Several acids were suggested for removing iron gall ink and of these, oxalic acid was the most popular because it was least likely to affect the texture of paper.29ibid. On one of the specimens removed from the album, there is an inscription in Sticht’s hand describing the treatment he conducted: ‘[B]leached by strong chloride and oxalic acid for a fortnight … the date … was removed, but the watermark tracing left’. Sticht undertook treatment on approximately fifty album specimens and although it is not ideal that he interfered with the original layout of the album, the removal of specimens has made it possible to view and photograph the watermarks using transmitted light.30I am indebted to Predrag Cancar, Senior Photographer, NGV, for photographing all the watermark specimens.
The von Büllingen album was bequeathed to the NGV in 1994 by Helen Jeannette Gibson, widow of the late Robert Carl Sticht Jr. Since entering the NGV Collection, the album has been studied extensively. All watermarks have been fully documented, and this information is now available through The Bernstein Portal (Memory of Paper), a digital collection of over 260,000 watermarks, presented in ten languages.31Information about each watermark, including the possible date, country of origin and history of the watermark emblem, can be found in the ‘Buellingen’ section of the portal. To search the database, see https://memoryofpaper.eu/buellingen/. The NGV’s Paper Conservation studio is deeply indebted to Emanuel Wenger, Austrian Academy of Sciences, for his invitation to include the album in The Bernstein Portal, and for creating a beautiful, user-friendly web interface. Participation in The Bernstein Portal has enabled the NGV to make this rare and fascinating album available to an international audience.
Louise Wilson is Conservator of Paper at NGV.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Quarterly, the journal of the British Association of Paper Historians, no. 120, October 2021.