The art of papermaking began in China as early as the Chien-ch'u Period. A member of the Imperial Guard and later Privy Councillor, Ts'ai Lun, informed the Emporer in the year 105 A.D. that he had created an alternative to the use of sheepskin parchment, which he had made from the fibers of the mulberry tree along with hemp, other plants and rags. The substance which became known as paper was much cheaper than parchment, and quickly came into general use in the Orient.

   From the Orient, paper was exported to other regions of the world, including the Middle East. It was in Samarkand, a metropolitan center on the trade route, located in what is present-day Uzbekistan, that the first instance of the production of paper outside of China occurred. The technique was obtained from Chinese prisoners of war. From Samarkand, the knowledge of the craft of papermaking spread southwestward to the Mesopotamian city of Baghdad. Paper was first made in Baghdad as early as 793 A.D. By the year 800, paper produced in Baghdad and Samarkand was being used in Egypt and throughout the Arabian Peninsula. By the time another century had passed, paper was also being produced in Egypt. By the year 1100, the knowledge of papermaking was introduced by the Egyptians to Morocco.

   It is believed that the art of papermaking, and coincidently, of the concept of watermarks, spread from the Arabs to Europe by three routes: 1.) The Arab occupation of Sicily in the mid-Thirteenth Century led to the introduction of papermaking into Italy (e.g. the earliest mention of paper being produced there was at the town of Fabriano circa 1276); 2.) The Moors brought the art to the Iberian Peninsula as early as the 1100s (e.g. paper was being produced in the Spanish city of Xativa in 1150); and 3.) During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, men returning from the Crusades in the Holy Land brought the art of papermaking to the European countries from which they had been recruited for the Crusades.

   Irregardless of the route, papermaking was quickly embraced by the people of the southern European region (i.e. northern Italy to southern France and northern Spain) primarily for religious reasons. Europe, during the so-called Medieval period, was undergoing the initial stages of religious reformation. The pre-Reformation sects of the Albigenses in northern Spain and southern France, the Waldenses of Switzerland, and the Cathari and Patarini of northern Italy flourished almost exclusively in the artisan classes. They found papermaking to be the key to gaining more followers because they could print books more inexpensively on paper than on the previously employed mediums of vellum and parchment. And so for that reason, the region of southern Europe became, and would continue to be recognized as, the 'cradle of papermaking'. (The religious sect of the Patarini, i.e. the ragsellers, in fact derived their name from the fact that they operated the rag market for the purchase of rags with which to make paper.)

   As the Medieval period gave way to the Renaissance, the papermakers of southern Europe were the first to use watermarks extensively. In view of the fact that it is believed that the heretical religious sects were the first to embrace papermaking, it is possible that the images they created in their watermarks possessed religious symbolism.

   Watermarks produced by the Cartiere Miliani Mill in the Italian papermaking town of Fabriano, the oldest continuously operated papermill in Italy, have been dated to the year 1282.

   An image consisting of a cross with circles at the points is believed to be the earliest watermark to have been produced by the Cartiere Miliani papermill at Fabriano. The town's symbol was an image of an anvil, and it is believed that that image was also created as a watermark by the company.

   Another early symbol used as a watermark image was the fleur-de-lis, which has been found in paper dating to 1285.

   At this early stage in the history of the watermark, both, the bent and shaped piece of wire, along with the phenomenon that came to be created within the depths of the paper, tended to be known by a number of names. The Dutch called it the papiermerken, from which the name papermark comes. The French used the name of filigrane which basically refers to the shaped or bent wire. The English began to use the name, watermark about the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. And the Germans seem to have used wasserzeichen, which was their version of the English word, watermark, for this phenomenon. To the present day, some papermakers still use the name, papermark, for the shaped piece of wire, while the image left by it in the paper has become known as the watermark.

   The lawyer, Bartola de Sassoferrato was the first to mention watermarks, when, in his papers dating between 1340 and 1350, he noted that a papermaker could be prohibited from using the mark of a different papermaker.

   Watermarks may have originally been utilized to differentiate the product of individual master papermakers within each single papermill since there was no other way to do so. This would have helped to resolve disputes in the event that one papermaker would accuse another of theft.

   Coming into being as early as 1290, and progressing through the Sixteenth Century, the guild system thrived throughout Europe. In its simplest terms, the guild was a professional society, whose members practiced a particular trade or craft. But it was a professional society in which you had to participate if you desired to practice certain trades. The members paid a fee or tax to continue their membership in the guild; but the payment was worth it, because failure to join a guild could result in failure and possibly being ostracized. The guilds operated as monopolies, setting prices and standards. Because the guild was essentially a closed society, the knowledge of one craftsman diffused to others. Therefore, the use of watermarks spread from one papermaker to others, and was embraced by all. The papermakers of Renaissance Europe realized that they could use the watermarks as a means to identify their individual businesses. They would shape wire into initials and simple symbols and then attach the shaped wires to the mesh of the paper mold screens. It was as simple a process as for a silversmith to engrave his own identifying initials or symbol into his product.

   Many countries which did not have their own papermaking guilds imported the much desired watermarked papers from countries such as Italy. There exists a wealth of Greek manuscripts dating from the Thirteenth Century which were written on watermarked paper imported from Italy.

   The art and craft of Papermaking was not destined to remain only in the Orient, Middle East and southern Europe; it was inevitable that papermaking and the creation of watermarks in that paper would spread to northern Europe. The first papermill to be established in the northern European region was in Germany, built by Ulman Stomer at Nurnberg in 1390. The watermark employed by this mill consisted of the letter "S" along with the heraldic arms of the city of Nurnberg. Jean L'Espagnol imported papermaking from Spain to the Netherlands, establishing a papermill as early as 1405 at Flanders. In 1495 the first papermill in England was established in Hertfordshire by John Tate. It was in 1576 that the first papermill to be built in Russia was established at Moscow. The first papermill to be built in Scotland was established at Dalry, near Edinburgh in 1591 by Mungo Russell and his son, Gideon.

   By the mid-1400s watermarks had become so popular that very little paper was produced which did not bear a watermark.

   The subjects for watermarks during the Renaissance followed closely those utilized in the so-called 'high arts' of painting and sculpture. Allegory was very popular during that period, and involved the assignment of specific attributes to particular images. For example, the unicorn was used in high art to symbolize purity and moral strength and the eagle symbolized power and authority. The meanings of these allegorical symbols were well known during the Renaissance, therefore they were very suitable for use in watermarks.

   Dard Hunter, in his book, Papermaking ~ The History And Technique Of An Ancient Craft, noted four basic categories of subject matter for watermarks.

   The book, Les Filigranes: Dictionarie Historique des Marques du Papier des leur Apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600, a survey of watermarks dating from the year 1282 to 1600, revealed that 16,112 examples have been identified as being in use during that period or just over three hundred years.

   During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, British papermakers used certain symbols to designate the paper's intended size. Marks such as the foolscap, hand, post and pott came into use in the 1400s (for example, the ‘foolscap’ mark can be traced to the year 1479). After these marks had been in use for some two centuries, papermakers began to use them to denote particular sized papers. "Royal" sized papers were marked with the symbol of a crown. "Post" sized papers were marked with the image of a horn. "Pott" sized papers were marked with the image of a chalice.

   The first papermill to be put into operation in the United States was the Rittenhouse Mill, built and operated by William Rittenhouse in 1690. It was situated on the banks of the Monoshone Creek near Germantown in the Province of Pennsylvania. It was in Amsterdam, Holland in the 1670s that William Rittenhouse learned the art and craft of papermaking. Rittenhouse created a watermark for use at his mill which consisted of the single word 'Company' and used it between the years 1690 and 1704. This first watermark to be utilized in the making of paper in the colonies stood for the partnership that Rittenhouse enterred into with William Bradford, the first printer in the Province of Pennsylvania and two other gentlemen. In 1704, Bradford dropped out of the partnership, and two years later Rittenhouse became the sole owner of the papermill. After 1706 Rittenhouse employed two watermarks, the one being just the letters "W" and "R" joined together, and the other being the image of a clover leaf inside a crowned shield with the word "Pensilvania" below it. The initial letters watermark was positioned on one half of the sheet of paper, while the other watermark was positioned on the opposite half of the sheet.

   Perhaps due to the establishment and success of the Rittenhouse Mill, the Province of Pennsylvania became a primary seat of creative and interesting watermark production in the American Colonies during the Colonial Period. A number of paper mills sprang up throughout the New England provinces, and although there were artistic ventures being undertaken in those provinces (the stereotype of the early colonists being staid and reserved in their pursuit of anything artistic is indeed an inaccurate stereotype and nothing more), the watermarks the papermakers employed were not very artistic. They tended to be simply the names and initials of the papermakers.

   It has been suggested that certain secret brotherhoods, which came into being during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, utilized watermarks as signs to identify members. Although not proven to be true, this theory is based on the fact that many of the members of the guilds also participated in those secret brotherhoods. At first glance, this speculation would appear to be simply that - speculation; it would seem that private individuals would not have the means to obtain their own privately watermarked paper. But it must be noted that the creation of special watermarks for private individuals, although not a common practice, was something that did occur. In the Introductory Note to the series of books titled, The Writings Of George Washington From The Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799, John C. Fitzpatrick noted that during his first administration as President of the United States of America, George Washington received a gift of a letterpress-copying machine for which he had paper specifically produced bearing his private watermark.

   It was during the early part of the Eighteenth Century that watermarks became popular in Japan. Of particular interest were watermarks of family symbols or heraldic designs. They were initially utilized for their intrinsic beauty in the paper used for screen and sliding door panels. It wasn't long before the feudal lords discovered that watermarks would be useful in making their hansatsu, or banknotes, more secure from counterfeiting.

   By the middle of the Eighteenth Century the study of watermarks (i.e. filigranology) began to develop and gain devotees. Marks were cataloged and published for the first time for the sake of their own inherent beauty and interest. This study would eventually progress to the point that book historians could utilize the catalogs to assign dates and places of manufacture to their ancient volumes. But as noted by papermaker historians, such as Dard Hunter, the study of watermarks is not an exact science. Over the years, collectors and researchers who have studied the history of watermarks have been misled by preconceived ideas, such as the idea that all paper bearing the marks of a particular ancient papermaker would have, of course, been made by that papermaker. Mr. Hunter pointed out, in his book, Papermaking ~ The History And Technique Of An Ancient Craft, that there was nothing to stop an unscrupulous, mediocre papermaker from using a mark that imitated the mark of a more successful and esteemed papermaker. Mr. Hunter gave, as an example, the practice of certain Continental papermakers who used the watermark of the noteworthy Whatman papermill, established by James Whatman in 1731 at Maidstone, England. Mr. Hunter also noted that it would not have been so unlikely for a mill to have sold its moulds to another mill without going to the trouble of removing the wire marks. It would also have been possible for a single paper mould to have passed through any number of mills before becoming too worn out for use.

   Though not a steadfast rule, during the centuries before the advent of paper machines, when paper was produced only by hand, the watermark was normally located in the top half of the broadside sheet. As such, it would only be visible on the first leaf of a folio, only in the middle of the binding of a quarto, and only at the top of the binding edge of an octavo. If you take a look at the images reproduced in the section of this document under the heading of A Gallery Of Watermarks, you'll find that they exhibit these types of sheet locations.

   In 1790 an Englishman by the name of John Phipps patented a method of teaching writing in which ruled lines were embedded in the paper by means of watermarking. The nearly invisible lines would help pupils to write straighter and more uniformly.

   The Parliament of England passed an Act in the year 1773 in which it was decreed that the death penalty would be levied on anyone found guilty of copying or imitating the watermarks used in the bank-notes of the British Isles. John Mathieson, a Scotsman, was the first man to be convicted of attempting to create counterfeit bank notes utilizing a watermarked paper that was so remarkably similar to that used for official bank notes, that a group of papermakers testified that the paper and its watermark had to be genuine. Mathieson, proud of his achievement, claimed that he had, by a secret procedure, 'added' the watermark to the paper after it had been produced. He asked for his freedom in exchange for knowledge of the secret procedure, but the court would not agree to the bargain, and so the secret died with Mathieson.

   In 1797 the Bank of England began a concerted attempt to crack down on counterfeiters. Between 1812 and 1818 it is estimated that there were 131,331 pieces of forged bank paper circulated in England. In an effort to combat the problem, the government, between 1797 and 1818, made some eight hundred and seventy arrests and executed over three hundred of them. Not all of those arrested for counterfeiting were involved in creating watermarked paper for their counterfeit currency, but some undoubtedly were.

   Working for the Bank of England, Sir William Congreve came up with a technique to produce what is known as a colored watermark. The technique consisted of overlaying a very thin couched sheet of white paper with a layer containing a design of colored pulp, and then overlaying that with another very thin white couched sheet. The three layers would then be pressed and dried. Like a true watermark, the colored watermark was only visible when the paper was held up to the light. Congreve's triple paper was patented on 04 December, 1819. Despite the cleverness of this technique, the cost to produce the paper was too prohibitive to be widely used.

   A watermark from 1785, produced by the Hauerz papermill in Wuttenburg, Germany, is the oldest known example of a 'shaded' image. This type of watermark, though not a true light & shade watermark, presented an illusion of being shading by utilizing a wire beaten flat and soldered to the paper mold screen. This was essentially a slight variation on the wire watermark and simply provided a wider space that would be read as lighter than the surrounding paper.

   The next major step in the history of watermarks came in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries with the introduction of finer mesh brass screens. The finer mesh allowed more detail to be captured when a shape was pressed into it. And that is exactly what papermakers began to do. They continued to shape and bend wire to form images, but instead of attaching the shaped wire to the screen, they pressed the shaped wire into the screen itself.

   An Englishman by the name of William Henry Smith is often credited with having created the first light & shade watermark in 1848 by taking the idea of pressing a shape into the wire mesh screen of the paper mold a step farther. He rightly guessed that if the shape that was pressed into the wire mesh screen contained a bas relief surface rather than a flat one, the resulting impression would take on the relief itself and the deepest areas would accumulate more pulp fibers than the thinnest ones. (It should be noted that it has been claimed that the French artists working for the Johannot Paper Mill at Annonay, Ardeche, France had produced the first light & shade watermarks as early as 1812, but they still employed the bent and shaped wire of the traditional watermark rather than the relief perfected by Smith.) Smith did not patent his invention, though.

   Those first light & shade watermarks were created by carving a relief sculpture into a plate of wax. An electrotype would be made of the wax relief by electrically bonding copper to it. The electrotype plate would then be pressed into the woven brass wire screen of the paper mold (which contained 48 to 60 wires to the inch). The papermakers discovered that short fibered pulp produced the best results with a light & shade watermark.

   A ban was instituted in 1887 by the Japanese government against the creation of light & shade watermarks by anyone other than the official Bank Note Office. Shorthly thereafter, in 1889, papermakers in Japan, in an effort to devise an alternative method by which they could produce watermarks of light and dark areas, came up with the process known as tesuri-kako-ho, (i.e. hand rubbing). This method, which is still used today by some Japanese manufacturers of paper wall panels, consists of creating a plate in which dark areas are defined by areas of parallel grooves, into which short fibers of pulp are introduced by rubbing the pulp with a succession of coarse to fine materials.

   The first paper making machine was invented by the Frenchman, Nicholas-Louis Robert and patented on 9 September 1798. He claimed that it was the constant quarrelling between the workers of the papermakers' guild that motivated him to attempt to create a machine that would replace hand labor. While in his thirties, Nicholas-Louis Robert acquired first a job at the Paris publishing firm operated by St. Leger Didot, and later a job at the Francois Didot paper mill at Essonnes. The Didot mill had been in business since the year 1355, and produced much of the paper used by the Minister of France for the nation's currency. In 1797 Robert produced a paper machine model, but as with many inventions, the initial trial of the machine proved it to be a failure. With his employer's encouragement, Robert continued to work on the machine, and either improved it, or built an entirely new model. The second trial was no more effective than the first. Eventually Robert persevered, and produced a full-scale paper machine. When this success became known and his previous employer, St. Leger Didot saw the quality of the paper that could be produced on the machine, he urged Robert to apply for a patent. The French Bureau of Arts and Trades were excited about the new machine and delared that Citizen Robert is the first to imagine a machine capable of making paper from the vat; this machine forms paper of great width and of indefinite length. The machine makes paper of perfect quality in thickness and gives advantages that cannot be derived from ordinary methods of forming paper by hand, where each sheet is limited in size in comparison with those made on this machine. From all reports it is an entirely new invention and deserves every encouragement. The principle by which Nicholas-Louis Robert's paper machine functioned is the same principle that modern papermaking machines are based upon: the paper is formed on an endless woven-wire cloth which retains the matted pulp fibers while at the same time allowing the superfluous water to drain through the mesh of the woven wire material.

   Due to some disagreements between Robert and his sponsors, St. Leger and Francois Didot, and also partly due to the state of affairs brought about by the French Revolution, progress on improvements to the paper machine came nearly to a standstill. In 1799 Francois Didot contacted his brother-in-law, John Gamble to ask if he could raise sufficient funds in England to manufacture a paper machine similar to the Robert machine. Gamble made contact with Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, two stationers located in London, and they expressed great interest along with the agreement to help fund the venture. On 20 April 1801 John Gamble was granted the first English patent on a paper machine. Bryan Donkin, a mechanic, was then engaged to construct a paper machine which was practically identical to the one which Robert had built in France.

   The Fourdrinier paper machine was patented on 24 July 1806 by Henry Fourdrinier, and a year later, on 14 August 1807 additional improvements were patented by Henry and his brother Sealy. The Fourdrinier paper machine, consisting of a number of paper moulds hooked together to form a cylinder of sorts to form the paper, and a series of other cylinders through which the forming paper would be passed on "an endless web of felting" in order to dry it, making possible the production of continuous long lengths of paper, was essentially the Robert paper machine with certain improvements. The original Fourdrinier paper machine was housed in the Two Waters Paper Mill in Hertfordshire, operated by Marchant Warrell.

   The success of the paper machine improved by the Fourdrinier brothers, Donkin and Gamble caught the imagination of others, and in 1807 Thomas Cobb received patents for additional improvements to the process. Then, in 1810, John Gamble and Bryan Donkin contributed to the project with more improvements. As a result of these individuals' work, the Fourdrinier paper machine was operating on a commercial basis by 13 January 1812.

   Not everyone, though, was pleased by the introduction of the new machine. Handmade-paper workers rightly feared that the new machine would cost many of them their jobs if it caught on throughout the world. Riots apparently were staged outside the Two Waters mill, and the windows had to be boarded up to prevent the malcontents from enterring and causing damage to the machine.

   Nicholas-Louis Robert and the Fourdrinier brothers were not the only ones inventing for the sake of papermaking in the early 1800s. In 1809 John Dickinson received a patent for the cylinder paper machine. The difference between this new type of paper machine and the original as designed by Robert lay in the way in which the web of paper was formed. A cylinder, covered with a woven wire fabric, was half immersed in the pulp vat. Inside the cylinder a vacuum was installed so that it would drawn the pulp to the surface of the fabric which encassed the cylinder. As the paper was thusly formed, it would be detached and passed on, by means of a felt, to other cylinders through which, and over which it would pass, drying as it went.

   Between 1803 and 1812 ten paper machines were constructed in England, and between 1812 and 1823 another twenty-five were built. Also, English built paper machines were exported to France, where the first was set up at Sorel in 1811. By 1833 there would be approximately twelve machines in operation throughout France.

   The impact of the paper machine on watermarking was both a negative and a positive ~ the negative being that a different way to form the watermark would have to be devised, since the paper would not be formed in the confines of the mould, to which the papermark was previously attached; and the positive being that the positioning of the watermark could now be more creatively modified. All-over or repetitive designs would be more easily accomplished ~ previously, to achieve an all-over design, the papermaker would have had to fabricate numerous similar shaped wire papermarks or electrotyped plates to be attached to the fabric of the paper mould; now as the cylindrical roll onto which the papermark would be attached repeatedly made contact with the forming paper, the watermark would be automatically repeated.

   The positive advantages of the paper machine over the hand mould certainly outweighed the negative disadvantages. The problem of devising a new way to form the watermark was solved by the creation of the dandy roll.

   The invention of the so-called, dandy roll is usually attributed to John Marshall, of the firm T.J. Marshall of London, which had been established in the year 1792. But Mr. Marshall did not file for a patent on his invention. The records of the Great Seal Patent Office include a patent granted to John Phipps and Christopher Phipps, dated 11 January, 1825 for "An improvement in machinery for making paper by employing a roller the cylindrical part of which is formed of 'laid' wire. The effect produced by the said cylindrical roller is that of making an impression upon the sheet of paper, or pulp, upon which the said roller passes & thus the paper so made has the appearance of 'laid' paper (like that manufactured by hand).".

   Apparently, neither John nor Christopher Phipps pursued the construction of their rollers. They passed into relative obscurity, and the patent is essentially the only notice we have of them at this time. On the other hand, John Marshall, in 1826, proceeded with the production of a similar roller, the name of which it is said was bestowed upon the roller when a worker at the Marshall establishment exclaimed: "Isn't that a dandy!".

   The original dandy roll consisted of a framework of lengthwise wooden ribs onto which round metal discs were attached in order to loosely support a woven wire fabric cover. Later dandy rolls consisted entirely of metal and the framework would be constructed so as to impart either a 'laid' or a 'wove' pattern onto the paper in addition to the watermark. Onto the woven wire fabric cover the papermark would be attached, initially by tying them on with fine wire, as in the earlier handmade paper moulds, and later by spot welding/soldering. The use of solder to attach the papermarks to the fabric cover came into vogue around 1870.

   A major difference in the use of the dandy roll as compared to hand paper moulds in regard to watermarks is that in making paper by hand, the paper pulp is placed over the papermark design, as the paper formation occurs, and the water is caused to drain downward through the fabric of the mould. In making paper on a machine, the dandy roll comes in contact from above the forming web of paper after the paper formation has occurred, and the paper is nearly dry. And scholars, such as Dard Hunter, have noted that the watermarks produced in handmade papers will always be more distinct and well-defined than those produced on a paper machine because the paper formed in a hand mould will not be influenced by shrinkage or stretching.

   By the year 1845, there were only two paper mills in the entire United States of America producing hand-made paper. This is a remarkable example of the industrial revolution in view of the fact that there were hundreds of paper mills in operation throughout the U.S.; there were eighty-nine in the small state of Massachusetts alone.

   In 1866, the Willcox Mill, established in 1729 by Thomas Willcox in Chester County, Pennsylvania, discontinued making paper by hand. It was the last one to do so in the United States.

   Hezekiah Niles published a newspaper, the Register at Baltimore, Maryland. In the issue published for 5 August 1820, he cajoled the members of Congress for using writing paper that bore the watermark of the royal crown of England. Instead, he suggested that the Congress "use paper that is watermarked with a codfish, a hoe-cake, a yoke of oxen, or a race horse, - anything but the royal crown of England.

   In 1840, English papermakers began to place small watermarked crowns on each sheet of paper intended for use in printing postage stamps.

   On October 10-13, 1996 the First International Conference On The History, Function And Study Of Watermarks was held at Roanoke, Virginia.

   In 1997 the International Association Of Paper Historians held a conference during which the Internation Standard For The Registration Of Papers With Or Without Watermarks was adopted.