Revealing Watermarks: How to Enhance the Security of Hand-Made Paper Items and Reveal Hidden Data

by Ian Christie-Miller

Overview

Watermarks reflect the very stuff of the origin, date, distribution, composition, history, and culture of paper-based items. Digital imaging of watermarks releases the research potential as widely as the internet itself. One example is the digital “fingerprinting” of paper in order to enhance the security of items, such as valuable and vulnerable maps. Revealing Watermarks offers detailed instructions of this process, through the author's own PaperPrint method, and by means of the case study of a sixteenth-century watermark—a crown from the arms of Danzig—it illustrates how cultural influences spread and have endured across the centuries, in this case from Sweden to Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644696262
Publisher:	Academic Studies Press
Publication date:	09/28/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	90
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Ian Christie-Miller is a former RAF pilot and teacher. During his London PhD he devised the Early Book Imaging System for watermark research and security enhancement. Publications include Traicté de la Cabale, (2007), 72 In His Name (Academic Studies Press, 2019), and articles on the Electronic British Library Journal.

Ian Christie-Miller was a NATO interpreter and RAF Search and Rescue pilot before becoming a teacher. His London PhD research into French sixteenth-century Kabbalism led to the invention of the Early Book Imaging System and to the development of digital imaging techniques as now used for revealing watermarks. It also lead to the publication of his Traicté de la Cabale (Honoré Champion, Paris, 2007), followed by a series of online and printed works mainly about sixteenth-century religious texts.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I.

PaperPrint—Security
Method
The Lindley Library and Other Examples of PaperPrint in Use

II.

Paper, Pages, and Finding Watermarks
How to Reveal Watermarks
Imaging Procedure
Image Processing and Archiving

III.

Case Study—Lithuania to Russia and Sweden—Cultural—the Danzig Connection

IV.

Case Study—Estonia—Number of Pages

V.

Composition and Dating

Downloads
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“BAPH member Ian Christie-Miller has been developing methods and equipment for retrieving and recording watermarks for very many years. His latest book on the subject is a very clear and readable discussion of the processes involved and their potential. … This fascinating and readable account of the process of identifying early printed books by analysing the watermarks of the paper used has a justifiable place in every library containing early printed material.”

— Peter Bower, The Quarterly

“A fascinating and readable account of the process of identifying early printed books by analyzing the watermarks of the paper used.

The first section of this book deals with security and explains how a book can be uniquely identified; the digital 'fingerprint' ensures that a particular book is categorized as the sole copy with these features. The process is reasonably simple and the method of the implementation is carefully thought through and well described; the remainder of this work recounts interesting research carried out on early books in the Baltic and North German areas.

This remarkable work has a justifiable place in every library containing early printed material.”

—Oscar Graves-Johnston, former International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, Chair of Security

“Dr. Christie-Miller’s innovative application of digital technology to the study of watermarks has increased our understanding of the distribution and use of paper in early modern Europe, and his book will be a valuable addition to any library wishing to look more closely at the paper on which its fifteenth and sixteenth century books were printed.”

—Katie Sambrook, Head of Special Collections & Engagement, Libraries & Collections, King’s College London