Report from Watermark Conference--Ongoing
Stephen M. Shearon
AMS and MLA-Listers,
I am writing to share with you some of the results of The First
International Conference on the History, Function, and Study of
Watermarks, which is approaching its conclusion even as I write. (I came
home early.) This conference, sponsored by The Center for Textual &
Editorial Studies at Virginia Tech, is an interdisciplinary event
oriented primarily to bibliographical specialists (given the sponsors'
presence in the Virginia Tech English Department), but art historians and
musicologists have been a definite, interesting presence there. I will also
share information about an amazing new technology for watermark study
that comes out of Parma, Italy. You will find the conference program at the
end of this message.
The participating musicologists were Dexter Edge, Steven Zohn, Ulrich
Konrad, Paul Laird (and Greta Jean Olson in absentia), Jeremy Smith, and
yours truly. The basic messages:
1. The consensus of those musicologists present is that we are generally
far behind our colleagues who are bibliographical specialists
(particularly those studying English literature, poetry, and documents)
and art historians in the application of these methods to musical
sources. Some (not all) of those on the cutting edge in our field (i.e.,
Beethoven, Mozart, Bach studies) would have been comfortably received,
but the rest of us have a lot to learn.
2. Musicologists have something to offer. Clearly, some of us are
collecting information about paper (including watermarks) in areas that
hitherto have not been studied: Southern Italy, the Iberian peninsula, and
Central and South America, for examples (i.e., parts of the former Spanish
Empire). While for us, just collecting the watermarks is a
groundbreaking achievement, our colleagues in other fields will be unable
to use this information unless we meet their standards while doing so.
This is especially true as they move to establish databases of watermark
images (already underway). The standards really have yet to be established.
3. The use of rastra data in source studies is generally unknown to our
colleagues in other fields. It seemed to be eye-opening to those present
at this conference. As we use rastra data to establish dates and
connections among hands and sources, other fields will find this to be an
excellent resource, if we can make it available to them.
4. The company Fotoscientifica, of Parma, Italy has developed a new
digital watermark detection system that may very well establish a new
standard in paper studies. They call it "the very high definition
direct digital technique." They take a picture of the leaf containing
the watermark with a digital camera having a maximum resolution of
6000x7520 non-interpolated pixels, ensuring ultra-high definition. (I
understand all this only generally; I'm copying from their information
booklet.) They can then digitally remove all the images on the page,
leaving an exact reproduction of the paper on which it was printed,
including the watermark. They can then manipulate the images (stored
in a database) to reconstruct the original sheet of paper! The images
are stored on a CD-ROM.
Daniela Moschini (music librarian at the Biblioteca Palatina) presented
this technology for Fotoscientifica through an interpreter. If I
understood dottoressa Moschini correctly, they intend soon to build a
database of watermark images from the Vivaldi manuscripts in both the
Dresden (Sa:chsische Landesbibliothek) and Parma collections. Dott.
Moschini gave me additional booklets showing this new system to take to
the AMS meeting in Baltimore. I will make them available there. NOTE:
This system is currently licensed only in Europe and so is not
available in the United States.
Finally, I thought Ulrich Conrad did a fine job of explaining to the
conference attendees the history and use of paper studies in the field of
musicology.
Best.
Stephen Shearon
Middle Tennessee State University
========================================================================
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 15:46:32 -0400
From: Dan Mosser <dan.m...@vt.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <water...@ebbs.english.vt.edu>
Subject: Conference Program
Program for The First International Conference on the History, Function, &
Study of Watermarks
Thursday, 10 October
(All sessions will be held in the Wilson Room)
1:30-2 pm Opening Remarks and Information
2-3 pm Session 1
Chair TBA
Ted-Larry Pebworth (University of Michigan-Dearborn), "Towards a
Taxonomy of Watermarks"
R. Carter Hailey (University of Virginia), "Watermark Study in
Mixed Paper Quartos: The Example of Robert Crowley's Piers Plowman (1550)"
3:-3:30 pm Break
3:30-5 pm Session 2
Chair TBA
Stephen Shearon (Middle Tennessee State University), "Watermarks
and Rastra in Neapolitan Music Manuscripts, 1700-1825"
Dexter Edge (London), "The Study of Eighteenth-Century Music
Paper: Problems and Prospects"
Steven Zohn, "Watermarks at Dresden and Their Implications for
Telemann Chronology"
7:30-8:30 pm Keynote Paper I
Paul Needham (Sotheby's, New York), "Caxton's Paper Supplies"
Reception to follow
=46riday, 11 October
8-9 am Continental Breakfast (full breakfast available in the Regency
Dining Room)
9-10 am Session 3
Chair TBA
Nancy Ash (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Shelley Fletcher
(National Gallery of Art), "Watermarks in Rembrandt's Prints"
Brett Charbeneau (Williamsburg Imprints Program), "Practical
Watermark Image Management in the Field"
10-10:30 am Break
10:30:-11:30 am Session 4
Chair TBA
Laetitia Yeandle (Folger Shakespeare Library), "Watermarks as
Evidence for Dating and Authenticity in Ben Franklin and John Donne"
Leonard Rapport, "Watermark Evidence for the Dating of Madison's
Notes to the 1787 Constitutional Convention"
11:30 am-1 pm Lunch & Announcements
1-2 pm Keynote Paper II
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Konrad (currently at the University of
Wu:rzburg; formerly of the Department of Musicology at the Hochschule
fu:r Musik, Freiburg i.B.), "The Use of Watermarks in Musicology"
2-2:30 pm Break
2:30-3:30 pm Session 5
Chair TBA
Celia A. Fryer (Presbyterian College), "Spanish and Italian
Watermarks in Colonial Guatemalen Books"
Paul R. Laird (University of Kansas) and Greta Jean Olson (Chinese
University of Hong Kong), "Watermarks in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Music
Manuscripts"
3:30-4 pm Break
4-5 pm Session 6
Chair TBA
Jeremy Smith (currently The University of North Dakota; formerly
UC-Santa Barbara), "Dating the Hidden Editions of Thomas East with Paper
Evidence"
James E. May (Penn State-DuBois), "The Uniformity of Paperstocks in
Mid-Eighteenth-Century Books and Pamphlets, Particularly Dublin Printing"
Daniela Moschini (Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, Italy;
representing Fotoscientifica, Parma) and Conor Fahy (University College,
London), "La Marca d'Acqua: The Watermarks Digital Sensing System"
Saturday, 12 October
8:00-9:00 am Continental Breakfast
9-10:00 am Session 7
Chair TBA
Carol Ann Eggert (National Gallery of Art), "Phosphorescence
Watermark Imaging"
Deborah A. Barclift & Michael Skalka (National Gallery of Art),
"The Rembrandt Project on CD-ROM" [poster/demo session]
Ruby Reid Thompson (University of Nottingham Library),
"Watermarks and Other Physical Evidence from the Portland Literary
Manuscripts"
10:00-10:45 am Break
10:45-11:45 am Session 8
Chair TBA
David L. Gants (University of Virginia), "Dylux and Digital
Cameras: Paper Studies at the End of the Century"
Robert W. Allison (Bates College), "An Automated WWW Search Tool
for Papers and Watermarks: The Archive of Papers and Watermarks in Greek
Manuscripts"
Daniel W. Mosser & Ernest W. Sullivan, II (Virginia Tech), "The
Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive"
Thomas L. Gravell, "Demonstration of the Dylux Method"
11:45 am Lunch
1:30-9 pm
Optional: Bus trip down Blue Ridge Parkway to Mabry Mill and wine tasting
and dinner at the Chateau Morrisette
...Dan Mosser <dmo...@vt.edu>
VOICE: (540) 231-7797
FAX: (540) 231-5692
[NOTE NEW AREA CODE]
=20