Featured 2 Albums with early German woodcuts (1490-1600).

That is a maybe an idea for the ones I cannot identify. There is one problem tough: most of the print are very small. That means you only can see a part of the watermark. Identifying a whole watermark is hard enough!

 

It's purely chance as to whether you'll be able to see a watermark (or a portion of) or not, and most of the prints probably won't show anything.

There are watermark data bases out there, but I don't know what access is like.

 

I thnk watermarks are useful to find out the age of a certain print or wether it is an original or a copy.
Most illustrations here are from books,then it is easier to use the text to find the book. And for books so much paper is needed,that more than one watermark is used in a single book, and due to the folding when binding the book many pages do not have watermarks.

 

Just some remarkable prints in the connection for fun:

The lactation of Saint Bernard, medieval people were weird...



A print with the monogram (CVS) of Christopher van Sichem (not very uncommon).



But the reverse shows it is from a Armenian Bible printed in Amsterdam in 1666.
This is the so called Oskan Bible, the first Catholic Bible printed in the Armenian alphabet!

 

Amazing. Things in Armenia were extremely difficult at the time, with many Armenians having to flee the Iranian scorched earth policy (to create a buffer between them and the ever advancing Ottomans).
There was an important Armenian community in the Dutch Republic.
Amsterdam was a centre for book printing, especially books that couldn't be printed elsewhere. Both the Armenian community here and the book printing fame explain why an Armenian bible was printed in Amsterdam. But to have this in your hands is a connection to that world of learning and free speech in a politically volatile, and even dangerous, world.

 

All prints are scanned and cataloged now and it is impossible to show all here unfortunately. I have made a selection of some prints from famous books or subjects.

Frontispieces



Portraits



Printer devices



Bordered pages



Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)



Ship of Fools (1497)



Ruralia Commodia - Farming manual (1518)



Well I can put them all here

 

Amazing, EL.

I looked through a magnifying glass, enough detail to recognize some of them.

 

This link should lead to a page with all the scans in a descent resolution. Can you see them?

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=eEk1X3V3aldkc0dwd3k3Z3l0Rm1iMjZ6S1JIOTFR

 

Oh yes, wonderful, thanks.

 

A marvelous collection. The scans work really well. So good to have a digital record.

 

I bought 2 extra prints on internet (both for €20). The seller sold them as lithographs, but it easy to see they are wood engravings. I recognized them as made by Jost Amman. Both come from one of his books about professions dating 1568.

The print were originally framed , but I asked the seller to send them without the frames.

Today they arrived, but both were attached to the frame with paper tape, so I decided to try to soak the tape off.

Prints in their pass-partouts

Soaking in warm water


Carefully peeling of the tape



Almost dry again.


As you see some of the paper tape was used to ‘repair’ some worm holes.

Now they are worth together €30 .

 

And the scans...

 

My father, who suffers dementia, liked the prints a lot so I decided to make a coloring book for him, after he choose his favorites.

This is the result:

https://youtube.com/shorts/DAUf88SwQHc

 

Wonderful idea, EL, and looks great.

Agree.