Watermark (Filigree)

A watermark (filigree) is an image, letters, or sign in paper, visible against the light, formed during papermaking owing to the varying thickness of the paper layer. From the era of handmade paper production (from the 13th–14th centuries), each paper mill had its own watermarks — a kind of 'factory mark' (animals, coats of arms, letters, jugs, crescents, and so on). Since the designs of watermarks changed over time, filigrees are one of the most precise means of dating undated manuscripts and old prints: by comparing a watermark with dated specimens in filigranological reference works (the albums of Charles-Moïse Briquet, Nikolai Likhachov, and others), a scholar establishes the approximate time of the paper's manufacture and hence the earliest possible time of the text's writing. The discipline that studies watermarks is called filigranology. The filigrees of Ukrainian and European papers of the 16th–18th centuries are a valuable source for medieval studies, codicology, and the history of the book.