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In-folio et culture matérielle

Hidden Gems: The Watermarks of the First Folio

Lara Hansen-Morse

Résumés

Le premier Folio de Shakespeare offre une occasion unique d’analyser les filigranes, le format des livres in-folio permettant de voir clairement les filigranes au centre des feuilles. Cet article met en lumière les variations de filigranes trouvées sur le papier à couronne utilisé pour imprimer le premier Folio. Les résultats exposés ici sont un des fruits de la recherche bibliographique publiée dans The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue d’Eric Rasmussen et Anthony West. En observant des milliers de filigranes presque chaque jour pendant des mois, il est devenu clair que la forme de ceux-ci n’était pas stable mais qu’ils apparaissaient plutôt avec des distorsions qui témoignaient des formes diverses d’un même filigrane plutôt que de filigranes différents. En regroupant les filigranes qui ont la même forme, cet article montre que les groupes distincts correspondent à des fournisseurs différents de papier à couronne utilisé dans l’imprimerie des Jaggard. La présence de signatures sur papier non marqué pourrait indiquer l’existence d’un autre fournisseur. Les études bibliographiques comme celle-ci permettent d’explorer les pratiques en vigueur chez les éditeurs et imprimeurs de la première modernité.

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  • 1 Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description, Winchester, U.K.: St. Paul’s Bibliograph (...)

1The Shakespeare First Folio presents unique opportunities for studying watermarks. Identifying watermarks is most easily accomplished using books in folio format. Constructed with a single fold of the sheet, the folio format allows the watermark to be clearly visible in the center of one of the resulting leaves. In formats with additional folds (quarto, octavo, and so on), watermarks are obscured or lost within the folds and are often trimmed away or buried in the gutter of the binding.1 Therefore, examining watermarks in folios permits more accurate analysis of watermark variants than would otherwise be possible. The sheer number of extant Shakespeare First Folios enables a study of watermarks across the print run rather than a focus on a singular or specific artifact.

2Eric Rasmussen and Anthony West’s The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue (2012) is undoubtedly the most comprehensive work on the First Folio since Hinman. This catalogue raisonné offers a minutely detailed bibliographic description of nearly every extant First Folio, totaling 232 to date. The data for the current project is reported in the Catalogue.

3The Rasmussen team set out to provide bibliographic descriptions for all 232 extant Shakespeare First Folios, and the team examined 219 of the 232 Folios. The project’s value is two-fold. First, the data found for each copy of the First Folio enabled a description of the individual characteristics of the specific artifact. Such detail provides a veritable fingerprint of the current state of each volume, preserving the condition of the volume at this point in its history as well as recording incontrovertible evidence of the item’s identity should the volume be stolen. Second, data collected on so many extant copies from the same edition allows us to see patterns across the copies. The conditions of the print shop for the First Folio can be traced by looking at watermark and variant states, signature by signature, sheet by sheet, forme by forme.

  • 2 These terms refer to the paper manufacturing process. The mould side would be the side of the paper (...)
  • 3 Carter Hailey, “The Best Crown Paper”, Foliomania! Stories Behind Shakespeare’s Most Important Book(...)
  • 4 Stephen Spector, Essays in Paper Analysis, Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987. Allan Stev (...)

4Recording watermark data presented interesting questions. As an early member of the Rasmussen First Folio team, I considered the wisdom of several watermark experts who advocated careful measurement of the watermark itself, the length of the chain lines, a watermark’s position relative to the chain lines, and whether we were viewing the watermark from the mould side or felt side.2 Using our “pilot folios,” we experimented with watermark measurements. Measuring the chain lines was not difficult, and it seemed like a task where the payoff would be an accurate identification of each watermark we were looking for. But measuring chain lines did not seem like a task we would want to perform for each watermark we encountered for each First Folio due to time constraints. Given these difficulties, and with much debate among the team, we decided that matching the watermarks we found to the exemplar sheet and recording on which leaf it appeared would be adequate for this project. Watermark expert, Carter Hailey would characterize this approach as identifying the “mugshot” rather than the “fingerprint” of the watermark.3 We conceded the fact that we might miss the chance to identify First Folios with the specificity recommended by prominent bibliographers.4 Had this project been focused on a watermark study, measuring the watermarks in relation to chain lines would have been fundamental. Because watermark data was only part of the project’s goal and not the central focus, we accepted the limitations imposed by our decision.

5Recording the mould side/felt sides also presented problems because to see these, the researcher would have to use a raking light. The team was sensitive to the limited amount of equipment research librarians would tolerate. If there was a chance that librarians would not allow the use of a raking light on their First Folios, we did not want to risk having holes in our data. In addition, we knew we would be bringing in new team members who would have to be carefully trained in our procedures and in how to properly handle the Folios themselves and any tools we would utilize in our data collection. To test the efficacy of recording mould side/felt side, early team members experimented with a raking light. With two researchers working together, it took hours to determine the mould side/felt side and required an additional pass through the volume. To further complicate the issue, there is a lack of uniformity in the watermark positions within the signature and some watermarks appeared upside-down. That told us that either the handling of the paper during the printing; or the stacking of the sheets during the manufacturing process at the mill, caused the watermarks to appear randomly on either of the conjugate leaves of a sheet and randomly upside-down. Therefore, mould side/felt side seemed a trivial detail compared to other data we were collecting. In the final analysis, we decided that identifying watermarks and recording them was enough for our descriptions without measuring chain lines or addressing mould side/felt side observations. The watermarks were an element of the description, not the central subject of our study.

6As an early member of the team assembled for the Catalogue project, I developed the spreadsheets, variant lists, and watermark exemplar sheets to be used by other teammates to maximize our efficiency in using valuable library time. The Catalogue, indeed, an ambitious bibliographic effort, reported the data we collected. It did not analyze the data it presented. That is, the Catalogue is faithfully recorded raw data for each copy, but analyzing the data across copies allows for patterns in the data to reveal practices in the early modern printing and publishing industry.

  • 5 Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare, Oxford, Clarendo (...)

7This study not only benefits from the clear view of watermarks given the format but also benefits from the large sample size, namely 219 of the 232 extant copies of the First Folio. Prized possessions in libraries of the most discriminating collectors, First Folios were safely preserved so that the surviving numbers of copies represent nearly a third of the original edition size.5 (Charlton Hinman estimated the edition size to be 1200 copies. Peter Blayney revised this estimate to 750 copies.) Given this amount of data, patterns emerge to confirm or refute past scholarly work on what watermark evidence illustrates regarding early modern printing and paper manufacturing in general, and the printing of the First Folio in particular.

  • 6 Gaskell, op. cit., p. 41.
  • 7 John Bidwell, “French Paper in English Books,” The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, John B (...)
  • 8 Edwin Eliod Willoughby, A Printer of Shakespeare; the Books and times of William Jaggard, London, P (...)
  • 9 James Riddell, “Ben Johnson’s Folio of 1616,” Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, Richard Harp and S (...)

8There were many decisions to be made by early modern printers who were planning a printing project on the scale of the First Folio. Early modern publishers and printers planned page layout and design to determine how the book would look, but more importantly, how much paper to purchase.6 Acquiring paper represented fully a third of the production cost of publishing a book. The expenses of the print shop (materials and workers’ salaries) and the costs of procuring the rights to the texts constituted the other two-thirds.7 Folios were the most expensive format to print because they used the most paper. Therefore, only “important” books were printed in folio format, usually law books and bibles.8 Play texts were ordinarily printed as single plays in quarto format (1 printed sheet folded twice). Indeed, 18 of the 36 plays in Shakespeare’s First Folio had previously been printed as quartos. As is commonly known, Ben Jonson’s 1616 Works was the first publishing venture featuring the collected works of a playwright printed in folio format. Jonson oversaw the printing of his Folio for which he drew the mocking of his contemporaries, “Pray tell us Ben, where does the mystery lurk, / What others call a play, you call a work.”9 Heminge and Condell, working in conjunction with Edward Blount, an established London publisher, decided their friend Shakespeare’s plays should be printed as a collection in no less suitable format. To be fair, to replicate the production of a single volume of Shakespeare’s plays, following Jonson’s example, the folio format would have been an economical printing solution.

9Perhaps the success of Ben Jonson’s Works emboldened Blount to speculate that the demand for Shakespeare’s collected works would justify the costly initial investment in 1621.10 According to James Bidwell, crown paper sold for 4s. 6d. a ream.11 If we follow Peter Blayney’s suggestion of a 750-copy edition size, and the finished First Folio has 227 sheets, then the total number of sheets required for the project was 170,250 sheets. Divided by 500 sheets in a ream, Blount purchased 341 reams of paper for the Shakespeare job at a cost of £76.725. Bidwell explains that paper was a third of the cost of the production. The entire venture cost Blount £230. (roughly equivalent to $69,377 today).12 Peter Blayney calculated the production costs of the First Folio were 6s. 8d. per copy and sold for 15s. retail.13 For context, “a bound folio would be about forty times the price of a single play and represented almost two months’ wages for an ordinary skilled worker.”14 Given this markup, Blount needed to sell 307 copies to recoup his investment (41% of the run). Selling the entire run, Blount would net £562.5, clearing a £332.5 profit. The gamble must have paid off because the First Folio was reset as the Second Folio just 9 years later in 1632.15 Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio would not get a second edition until 1640/1.

  • 16 The date for Prynne’s Histrio-mastix is 1633 on the imprint, but there is evidence to suggest it wa (...)

10In addition to the audacious, or perhaps economical, decision to print Shakespeare’s plays in folio format, publisher Edward Blount and company decided to purchase crown paper for the project. William Prynne, a prominent Puritan lawyer, complained in his 1632 Histrio-mastix that “Shakespeare’s plays are printed on the best Crown paper, far better than some Bibles” (sig. **6v).16 Crown paper was of mid-level quality, so Prynne’s histrionics were misplaced, but he was clearly exercised by his perception of the extravagance given for a relatively lowly enterprise. Blount’s intent was to produce Shakespeare’s collected plays as a book marketed to a distinguished clientele without an excessive initial investment. Deciding what kind of paper to use was a key component of the planning stage for a printing project.

  • 17 Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, New York, Dover Publicatio (...)
  • 18 Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst, A Short History of the Printed Word, Point Roberts, WA, Hart (...)
  • 19 Gaskell, op. cit., p. 73-74.
  • 20 Bidwell, art. cit., p. 590.

11Paper was milled in Europe since the twelfth century, and used for manuscript production long before the printing press revolutionized book production in 1455.17 By the early seventeenth century paper was in great demand supplying print houses in every major European city.18 To meet the demands of the printers for uniformity in paper size, color, and thickness (weight), the paper industry developed standards in manufacturing to meet these needs. A printer could select a type of paper needed for a particular print project depending on the format and size of the finished book. Popular papers in the period were pot, foolscap, crown, demy (fleur-de-lys watermark), and royal (grape cluster watermark).19 The following table illustrates the relative sizes and prices for these papers.20

Table 1: Paper Sizes and Prices.

Price (per ream)

Name

Approx. Measurement (in. and mm.)

Ordinary

Fine

Pott

12.5 x 16 (317.5 x 406.4)

2s. 9d. – 5s.

Foolscap

13 x 17 (330.2 x 431.8)

5s. – 5s. 10d.

6s. 6d. – 7s. 9d.

Crown

13.75 x 18 (349.25 x 457.2)

4s. – 6s. 6d.

8s. – 8s. 6d.

Demy

15 x 19.5 (381 x 495.3)

7s. 2d. – 11s. 6d.

15s. – 16s.

Royal

18 x 23.5 (457.2 x 596.9)

12s. – 24s.

34s.

  • 21 Edward Heawood, “Paper Used in England after 1600,” The Library series 4, xi.3, 263-99, p. 264; Edw (...)

12These papers were named to indicate their size and quality, which was further signified by a watermark. Earlier papers used watermarks as a trademark indicative of a specific mill. By the early seventeenth century, watermarks were used to indicate a type of paper.21 Thus, a publisher/printer needing foolscap paper could procure the paper from several mills and expect the paper to be 13 x 17 inches and be marked with an image of a jester. Having these industry standards in place ensured the finished product, the book sold as a stack of unbound sheets, would be of uniform size, color, and weight.

  • 22 I am indicating Blount as the purchasing agent for the paper, given that the publisher was generall (...)

13As mentioned before, Blount chose crown paper for the Shakespeare First Folio.22 Crown watermarks appear throughout the First Folio. Typical of paper in the period, the watermark was fastened to the screening in the center of one side of the mould (see diagram).

Figure 1: Mould with Crown Watermark.

Figure 1: Mould with Crown Watermark.

14The resulting sheet has a watermark that appears on the right side of the sheet. The watermark then is visible in the center of the leaf when folded with the single fold that defines the folio format. First Folio watermarks appear on either conjugate leaf of the sheet (or either side of the bifolium). I identified 21 different crowns in the First Folio which vary in appearance due to various causes covered below. The following table is a summary of the 21 First Folio watermarks including their number designations, their names, and their measurements. They are sorted by the frequency with which they appear.

Table 2: First Folio Watermark Names and Frequencies

Watermark Number

Watermark Name

Size (mm)

Frequency (% of all watermarks)

2

Crown w/IG w/stars

40x38

17.60%

3

Crown w/round ornaments

31x30

12.78%

5

Crown w/IDO

32x36

10.81%

1

Crown w/IG

34x29

9.52%

4

Crown w/pointed ornament

32x35

8.63%

6

Crown w/LC

36x33

8.40%

7

Crown NLM

40x28

4.73%

19

Crown w/big D

36x35

4.05%

10

Small Crown

25x25

2.94%

8

Crown NLM fuzzy

40x35

2.87%

15

Curly Crown

40x35

2.87%

21

Crown w/loops

30x31

2.66%

11

Flat Crown w/flowering ball

42x42

2.66%

9

Crown w/EDP

35x30

2.34%

16

Small Round Crown

35x22

1.90%

14

Flat Crown bent

44x41

1.82%

17

Small Simple Crown

27x31

1.82%

18

Large Simple Crown

26x31

1.75%

12

Flat Crown complete

30x35

1.07%

13

Flat Crown broken

41x43

0.50%

20

Crown w/AB

38x38

0.35%

15The First Folio is a folio in sixes with a few exceptions. Therefore, we expect to see watermarks on three leaves of every regularly constituted signature. In a typical signature, we expected to see watermarks on signature conjugate leaves 1 or 6 (but not both), 2 or 5 (but not both), and 3 or 4 (but not both). We recorded instances where there were no watermarks on a sheet, and instances where a sheet contained watermarks on both conjugate leaves. We came to see that non-watermarked sheets appeared in predictable patterns.

Unmarked paper

16The absence of watermarks served to baffle the team early on, but it became apparent that Jaggards’ shop used unmarked paper for the First Folio and relied on it heavily in certain areas. Rather than being troubled by the presence of unmarked sheets, seasoned team members anticipated unmarked paper when they got to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Henry the Sixth Part 1, Richard the Third, and Hamlet. The following sheets exhibit large instances of unmarked paper:

Comedies

C1:6, E3:4, M1:6, N2:5, N3:4, O3:4, Y2:5, Y3:4

Histories

e1:6, e2:5, f1:6, f2:5, g3:4, p1:6, p2:5, q1:6, q2:5, q3:4, r1:6, r2:5, r3:4, s1:6, s2:5, x1:4, x2:3

Tragedies

gg1:2, Gg2:5, hh1:6, kk3:4, oo1:6, pp1:6, pp3:4, qq2:5, bbb2:5

  • 23 Mark Bland, A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; John (...)
  • 24 David L. Vander Meulen, “The Identification of Paper without Watermarks: The Example of Pope’s ‘Dun (...)

17It is uncertain whether the unmarked paper came from the same suppliers as the other First Folio stocks or if it represents a whole separate stock.23 What is interesting to glean from a cross-copy analysis of the unmarked paper is the large numbers of it found in the places we came to anticipate. The numbers confirmed our observations. However, when I tallied the instances of watermarks present on every sheet, I found unmarked paper present on nearly every sheet. The numbers show that unmarked paper appears in scarce instances on most sheets and demonstrate that unmarked paper was used throughout the printing process. Several explanations might account for this. First, the unmarked paper might be from a supplier that did not use watermarks. This is difficult to accept because the specific paper was bought and sold according to its quality. The watermark was the paper’s identification. Another possibility is that ordinary paper suppliers produced paper without watermarks. Alternatively, perhaps a watermark fell off the mould, perhaps unmarked moulds were used by apprentices. Another possibility might be that unmarked paper was used as cording quires (quires used to package and protect the internal sheets of the ream from the cord used to bundle the ream and to keep the internal sheets clean and dry). It may be that sheets in the cording quires were considered in good enough condition to use in the press. It seems reasonable to assume that whatever the exact nature of the unmarked paper, the frequency with which it appears indicates that unmarked paper was quite common.24 Tables 1, 2, and 3 illustrate the instances of unmarked paper. Arranged in bar graphs, the data quite clearly shows the trends of unmarked paper usage throughout the printing of the First Folio that is most heavily used in localized plays.

Table 3: Unmarked paper, Comedies.

Table 3: Unmarked paper, Comedies.

Table 4: Unmarked paper, Histories.

Table 4: Unmarked paper, Histories.

Table 5: Unmarked Paper, Tragedies.

Table 5: Unmarked Paper, Tragedies.

Watermark Twins

  • 25 Allan Stevenson, “Watermarks are Twins,” Studies in Bibliography 4, 1951-2, 57-91.
  • 26 Stevenson reports that these two-man teams could produce 7-8 pages a minute and up to 8 reams a day (...)

18Allan Stevenson’s extensive work with watermarks led him to assert that watermarks exist as twins.25 He explained that watermark twins result from the use of two moulds pulled from a single vat at the paper mill. A two-man team, one the vatman and the other the coucher worked with a set of moulds to make the paper. The vatman pulled the mould and deckle through the vat of paper pulp, then handed it off to the coucher who would turn it out onto a piece of felt. The team repeated this process, stacking the interspersed paper and felts until the stack was compressed in a large press which then squeezed out any remaining water and further bonded the rag fibers into flat sheets of paper. In order to maintain maximum efficiency each team kept the two moulds in continuous motion.26 Both moulds had the same watermark, but because each watermark was made individually by hand, watermarks had varied slightly. The inventory of First Folio watermarks confirms Stevenson’s observations about watermark twins.

19In the inventory of first folio watermarks we clearly observe four instances of watermark twins. Watermarks 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 7 and 8, and 17 and 18 are twins. It is possible that other watermarks could be grouped as twins but in order to identify twins exactly a more thorough recording of watermarks and their corresponding chain lines are necessary. As explained in the methodology, the research gathered in this project was to identify the presence of a specific type of watermark, without identifying its corresponding chain lines or other important details in identifying twins. Had this been a study on watermarks themselves, those measurements would certainly have been critical.

Paper stocks

20Gathering the data for the watermarks is useful for further describing the book – but only by aligning data copy to copy can we imagine what was going on in the print shop. The data for the watermarks allows us to tally instances of watermarks that appear on a single sheet as it was processed through the press for the required number of times for the run.

  • 27 Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, 1683-4, London, Oxford University P (...)

21If we suppose an edition size of 750 copies, then while the pressmen were completing their work on a run of a single sheet, they would need to open reams of paper. A ream was defined as 480-500 sheets (depending on how many sheets were considered to be cording sheets).27 For 750 copies, the pressmen would open one ream, then another. Perhaps they accessed a third ream if they began with a remainder ream. At the very most, a fourth ream might have been opened if the reams were short due to damage. We can imagine they opened reams one at a time, opening another after the first was spent, and so on. We might also imagine two or more reams were opened by the warehouse keeper and stacked for the pressmen to pull from while they worked. Whatever the actual practice was for paper handling, it is hard to imagine the pressmen using more than four reams to print a sheet for a 750-copy run.

22In compiling the number of watermarks for each sheet over the 219 copies of First Folios examined, it was shocking to see the number of watermarks we recorded. A few sheets exhibit only a single watermark, but it is more common to see sheets with four or five different watermarks. A few sheets exhibit as many as twelve and thirteen, one has fourteen. The average number of watermarks per sheet is 7.5.

23If we assume each watermark represents stock from a single supplier, then it does not make sense to see up to fourteen watermarks appearing on a sheet across the run. Assuming a watermark represents a specific stock would mean the pressmen in the Jaggards’ shop used up to fourteen different stocks during the printing of sheet V2:5 in All’s Well That Ends Well.

Figure 1bis: Crown Watermark Design Elements.

Figure 1bis: Crown Watermark Design Elements.

24The only way to make sense of the many different watermarks present for each sheet is to reimagine the watermarks as belonging to categories. We recorded the instances of twenty-one different watermarks. Their shapes and sizes lead to grouping. While each of the twenty-one watermarks is an individual watermark, some of which are obvious twins, there are some that have similar designs that show wear. The distortions of these basic designs might appear to be different watermarks, but the team came to recognize that the variations constituted the same marks in varying forms of distortion due to damage after consecutive pulls through the vats. I have categorized these watermarks based on their size and unique design elements. Specifically, the base of the crowns, the crests, the ornaments, and the ciphers are the design elements that allow me to describe watermarks in terms of groups. These groups represent different paper stocks.

25The most common group, or paper stock is “Crown 1.” The common design of this stock features a rectangular base of the crown that is roughly a third the size of the rounded crest. The crests are carefully crafted with detailed flourishes. Some of Crown 1 watermarks have pointed ornaments. Some of the watermarks in this stock contain ciphers within the base with the initials IG, LC, IDO, NLM, or more rarely D and AB. The different ciphers might be the initials of the vatman/coucher team that pulled that stack of sheets. Watermarks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, 19, 20, 21 belong to this stock. Crown 1 represents 83.21% of all watermarks found in our inventory of First Folio watermarks.

Crown 1 Paper Stock

Figure 2: Watermark 1 Crown w/IG.

Figure 2: Watermark 1 Crown w/IG.

Figure 3: Watermark 2 Crown w/IG w/stars.

Figure 3: Watermark 2 Crown w/IG w/stars.

Figure 4: Watermark 3 Crown w/round ornaments.

Figure 4: Watermark 3 Crown w/round ornaments.

Figure 5: Watermark 4 Crown w/pointed ornaments.

Figure 5: Watermark 4 Crown w/pointed ornaments.

Figure 6: Watermark 5 Crown w/IDO.

Figure 6: Watermark 5 Crown w/IDO.

Figure 7: Watermark 6 Crown w/LC

Figure 7: Watermark 6 Crown w/LC

Figure 8: Watermark 7 Crown w/NLM.

Figure 8: Watermark 7 Crown w/NLM.

Figure 9: Watermark 8 Crown w/NLM fuzzy.

Figure 9: Watermark 8 Crown w/NLM fuzzy.

Figure 10: Watermark 15 Curly Crown.

Figure 10: Watermark 15 Curly Crown.

Figure 11: Watermark 19 Crown w/Big D.

Figure 11: Watermark 19 Crown w/Big D.

Figure 12: Watermark 10 Crown w/AB.

Figure 12: Watermark 10 Crown w/AB.

Figure 13: Watermark 22 Crown w/loops.

Figure 13: Watermark 22 Crown w/loops.

26“Crown 2” designates another type of crown which is slightly larger and squarer than the crowns of Crown 1. Its crest extends up from the base with looping flourishes. This stock is represented by only one First Folio watermark. Watermark 9 contains a cipher with the initials EDP. Crown 2 represents 2.34% of all watermarks.

Crown 2 Paper Stock

Figure 14: Watermark 9 Crown w/EDP.

Figure 14: Watermark 9 Crown w/EDP.

27“Crown 3” is another type of crown which is quite a bit smaller than the other crowns and does not contain the detail or flourishes of the others. Its crest is triangular with little ornamentation within and on its top. This stock is represented by a single watermark. Watermark 10 is distinctive, a charming little crown the team affectionately named “the muffin.” Crown 3 represents 2.94% of all watermarks.

Crown 3 Paper Stock

Figure 15: Watermark 10 Small Crown.

Figure 15: Watermark 10 Small Crown.

28The “Flat Crown” stock contains larger crowns relative to the other stocks. They feature a minimal rectangular area that appears in various stages of damage, looking at times bent, faint or missing altogether. Its crest has rather elaborate, looping flourishes extending from the base with a flowery ball extending up from the center. Watermarks 11, 12, 13 and 14 belong to this stock. The Flat Crown stock represents 6.05% of all watermarks.

Flat Crown Paper Stock

Figure 16: Watermark 11 Flat Crown w/flowering ball.

Figure 16: Watermark 11 Flat Crown w/flowering ball.

Figure 17: Watermark 12 Flat Crown Complete.

Figure 17: Watermark 12 Flat Crown Complete.

Figure 18: Watermark 13 Flat Crown Broken.

Figure 18: Watermark 13 Flat Crown Broken.

Figure 19: Watermark 14 Flat Crown Bent.

Figure 19: Watermark 14 Flat Crown Bent.

29The “Round Crown” is yet another distinctive paper stock. Watermark 16 has a crown design with a rounded base. This stock is represented by a single First Folio watermark. It looks rather pear-shaped with a triangular crest that looks like a bow tied on its top. The Round Crown represents 1.90% of all watermarks.

Round Crown Paper Stock

Figure 20: Watermark 16 Round Crown.

Figure 20: Watermark 16 Round Crown.

30The “Simple Crown” stock contains unusually shaped crowns watermarks. Their bases are nearly square with little tails on the bottom. Their crests are defined by small loops running across the top of the base with slightly larger loops on the outer edges and in the center. Watermarks 17 and 18 belong to this stock. The Simple Crown stock represents 3.56% of all watermarks.

Simple Crown Paper Stock

Figure 21: Watermark 17 Small Simple Crown.

Figure 21: Watermark 17 Small Simple Crown.

Figure 22: Watermark 18 Large Simple Crown.

Figure 22: Watermark 18 Large Simple Crown.

31The following table summarizes my grouping of watermarks into paper stocks and shows the frequency with which they are represented in the First Folios examined.

Table 6: Paper Stock and Frequency.

Watermark Paper Stock

Watermarks

Frequency

Crown 1

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,15,19,20,21

83.21%

Crown 2

9

2.34%

Crown 3

10

2.94%

Flat Crown

11,12,13,14

6.05%

Round Crown

16

1.90%

Simple Crown

17,18

3.56%

Unmarked

6.70%

32If we suppose that these groupings are correct, then we can assume that the design of watermarks in each paper stock represents the house “style” of crown watermarks for a particular mill. That is, while different moulds included variations of crowns there were common design elements for each stock. Perhaps there was a single craftsman at the mill who fashioned all the watermarks and therefore made them all with a similar pattern. The variety of watermarks present in each sheet is accounted for if we suppose the number of different watermarks originated at the mill from several vatman and coucher teams contributing to the accumulated sheets that composed the ream. This is much more plausible than wondering why random papers were used in the print house. If we can then imagine a ream consisting of multiple watermarks, but belonging to the same paper stock, then we can reexamine the numbers of paper stocks, or reams might have been used to complete each sheet. In this light, there indeed are 3 or 4 reams used at most for any given sheet as we would expect.

  • 28 Paul Needham, “Catalogue of the Book of the XVth Century Now in the British Library,” British Libra (...)
  • 29 In personal correspondence with Paul Needham, he was interested to see evidence of multigeminate st (...)

33Paul Needham’s work with English incunabula led him to conclude that multiple watermarks appear in demonstrably single stocks. He called these stocks “multigeminate stocks.”28 The watermark data from the First Folio confirms Needham’s observations in the seventeenth century. Working with incunabula sets Needham’s work over a hundred years before the period relevant to this study.29

34It is conceivable that multigeminate stocks, as Needham labels them, are found throughout the early modern period. Because many bibliographers have focused their attention largely on typographical issues to discover or resolve editorial problems, paper evidence has been largely overlooked as a way of recreating conditions in the paper and printing industries in the early modern period. This study, because of the numbers of extant copies of a single edition and the number of copies the team examined amassed a large amount of data to enable the identification of mulitgeminate stocks produced by mills in the seventeenth century.

35The Rasmussen/West Catalogue is easily the most ambitious bibliographic project ever undertaken. The patterns I began to see in the data started becoming apparent as we were observing and recording. Examining a new folio every day while at the Folger confirmed that the watermarks we saw, although slightly different in some cases, were the same watermark with distortions. Had we employed Hailey’s “mugshot and fingerprint” approach, we may have recorded hundreds of distinct watermarks. However, I would have come to the same conclusion, that the watermarks can be grouped to indicate that six different paper mills supplied the paper to print the First Folio, seven, if the unmarked paper is considered a separate supplier. This bibliographic study is a part of a larger conversation of early modern print house and publishing practices. As with any bibliographic study of early modern English books, the evidence of the finished work is all bibliographers have to go on because records of early modern English printing practices are notoriously scarce. Examining the physical details of the surviving artifacts is the best a bibliographer can do. Combing through watermark data means finding the hidden gems of evidence between the sheets.

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Notes

1 Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description, Winchester, U.K.: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1994, p. 194. Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, Winchester, UK: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1995, p. 60.

2 These terms refer to the paper manufacturing process. The mould side would be the side of the paper which faced the mould (screening) and would have had direct contact with the watermark wires, thereby making the watermark appear to be bitten into the page. The felt side was the opposite side which was laid (couched) on a layer of felt before being stacked with other sheets before having the excess water squeezed out in a press.

3 Carter Hailey, “The Best Crown Paper”, Foliomania! Stories Behind Shakespeare’s Most Important Book, Washington DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2011, p. 12.

4 Stephen Spector, Essays in Paper Analysis, Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1987. Allan Stevenson, “New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence,” Papers of the Bibliographic Society, University of Virginia 1, 1948/49, 149-182.

5 Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare, Oxford, Clarendon, 1963, p. 39. Peter Blayney, The First Folio of Shakespeare, Washington, D.C.: Folger Library Publications, 1991, p. 2.

6 Gaskell, op. cit., p. 41.

7 John Bidwell, “French Paper in English Books,” The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, eds, vol. IV, 1557-1695, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 583-601, p. 590.

8 Edwin Eliod Willoughby, A Printer of Shakespeare; the Books and times of William Jaggard, London, P. Allan, 1934, p. 161.

9 James Riddell, “Ben Johnson’s Folio of 1616,” Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart, eds, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 152.

10 Walter W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio: Its Bibliographical and Textual History, Oxford, Clarendon, 1955, p. 455.

11 John Bidwell, art. cit., p. 590.

12 http://futureboy.us/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=230&currency=pounds&fromYear=1621, consulted Jan 2024.

13 Blayney, op. cit., p. 26.

14 Jean-Christophe Mayer, “Early Buyers and Readers,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s First Folio, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 105. Also discussed in Julie Stone Peters, Theatre of the Book 1480-1880, Print, Text and Performance in Europe, Oxford University Press, p. 331, n. 89.

15 Ibid.

16 The date for Prynne’s Histrio-mastix is 1633 on the imprint, but there is evidence to suggest it was completed in late 1632. Prynne might have been referring to Shakespeare’s Second Folio, also printed in 1632. Interestingly, two of the four Second Folio watermarks are large, very elaborate crowns.

17 Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, New York, Dover Publications, Inc, 1943, p. 114.

18 Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst, A Short History of the Printed Word, Point Roberts, WA, Hartley & Marks, 1999, p. 17.

19 Gaskell, op. cit., p. 73-74.

20 Bidwell, art. cit., p. 590.

21 Edward Heawood, “Paper Used in England after 1600,” The Library series 4, xi.3, 263-99, p. 264; Edward Heawood, Historical Review of Watermarks, Amsterdam, Swets & Zeitlinger, 1950, p. 8; E. J. Labarre and E.G. Loeber, Dictionary and Encylopaedia of Paper and Papermaking with Equivalents of the Technical Terms in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish & Swedish, Amsterdam, Swets & Zeitlinger, 1952, p. 246.

22 I am indicating Blount as the purchasing agent for the paper, given that the publisher was generally responsible for procuring the paper as well as the rights to the text, but the lines between publisher, printer, and bookseller are a bit blurred. André Favyn’s The Theatre of Honour, another folio project in production in the Jaggard’s print shop during the printing of the First Folio, also used crown paper from the same suppliers. Augustine Vincent’s A Discovery of Errors, yet another folio project underway in the shop at the time of the First Folio, used pott paper.

23 Mark Bland, A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; John Bidwell, “French Paper in English Books” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, eds, vol. IV, 1557-1695, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 583-601. Bland suggests that unmarked paper came from Spilman’s mill, 29n. Bidwell refutes this, noting of English paper mills, “Although fourty-one mills are known to have been operating in England between 1601 and 1650, there is no evidence that any of them could supply the printing trade.” This was mostly due to the monopoly of French mills held in the acquisition of rag (p. 585-586).

24 David L. Vander Meulen, “The Identification of Paper without Watermarks: The Example of Pope’s ‘Dunciad,’” Studies in Bibliography 37, 1984, 58-81.

25 Allan Stevenson, “Watermarks are Twins,” Studies in Bibliography 4, 1951-2, 57-91.

26 Stevenson reports that these two-man teams could produce 7-8 pages a minute and up to 8 reams a day, “New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence.” Papers of the Bibliographic Society, University of Virginia 1 (1948/49), 149-182.

27 Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, 1683-4, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 320-1.

28 Paul Needham, “Catalogue of the Book of the XVth Century Now in the British Library,” British Library Journal 6, 1980, 130-43; “Bibliographic Evidence from the Paper Stocks of English Incunabula,” Buch Und Text Im 15. Jahrhundert: Arbeitsgespräch in Der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 1.bis 3 1981, 79-87 and, “Allan H. Stevenson and the Bibliographical Uses of Paper,” Studies in Bibliography 47, 1994, 23-64.

29 In personal correspondence with Paul Needham, he was interested to see evidence of multigeminate stocks persisting to the early seventeenth century.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Mould with Crown Watermark.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-1.jpg
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Titre Table 3: Unmarked paper, Comedies.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 123k
Titre Table 4: Unmarked paper, Histories.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-3.png
Fichier image/png, 114k
Titre Table 5: Unmarked Paper, Tragedies.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-4.png
Fichier image/png, 128k
Titre Figure 1bis: Crown Watermark Design Elements.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-5.jpg
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Titre Figure 2: Watermark 1 Crown w/IG.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 64k
Titre Figure 3: Watermark 2 Crown w/IG w/stars.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-7.jpg
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Titre Figure 4: Watermark 3 Crown w/round ornaments.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-8.jpg
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Titre Figure 5: Watermark 4 Crown w/pointed ornaments.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-9.png
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Titre Figure 6: Watermark 5 Crown w/IDO.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-10.jpg
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Titre Figure 7: Watermark 6 Crown w/LC
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 88k
Titre Figure 8: Watermark 7 Crown w/NLM.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-12.jpg
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Titre Figure 9: Watermark 8 Crown w/NLM fuzzy.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-13.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 84k
Titre Figure 10: Watermark 15 Curly Crown.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-14.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 80k
Titre Figure 11: Watermark 19 Crown w/Big D.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-15.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 88k
Titre Figure 12: Watermark 10 Crown w/AB.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-16.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 84k
Titre Figure 13: Watermark 22 Crown w/loops.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-17.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 84k
Titre Figure 14: Watermark 9 Crown w/EDP.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-18.jpg
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Titre Figure 15: Watermark 10 Small Crown.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-19.jpg
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Titre Figure 16: Watermark 11 Flat Crown w/flowering ball.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-20.jpg
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Titre Figure 17: Watermark 12 Flat Crown Complete.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-21.jpg
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Titre Figure 18: Watermark 13 Flat Crown Broken.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-22.jpg
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Titre Figure 19: Watermark 14 Flat Crown Bent.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-23.jpg
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Titre Figure 20: Watermark 16 Round Crown.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-24.jpg
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Titre Figure 21: Watermark 17 Small Simple Crown.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-25.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 72k
Titre Figure 22: Watermark 18 Large Simple Crown.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9076/img-26.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 80k
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Lara Hansen-Morse, « Hidden Gems: The Watermarks of the First Folio »Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare [En ligne], 42 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2024, consulté le 08 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/9076 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/137t4

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Lara Hansen-Morse

PhD
University of Nevada, Reno

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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