Surely one of the truly hidden joys of reading, the discovery of a watermark. Holding the page up to light to better see and following it through the volume, in the process gaining insight into the size of the paper before it was folded and trimmed.

The process is dated to 1282 and Italy (this information from Dard Hunter’s Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, first published in 1948; reprinted by Dover, NY, 1978), thereby predating printing from moveable type by some two centuries.

How is it done? By making a ‘picture’ or forming text directly on wire moulds.

In the Gutenberg42-line Bible of c1450 there is a watermark of a bunch of grapes. Later, watermarking was (and still is) used to prevent or hinder forgeries, as in banknotes.

(The illustrations shown here are from Paper and Paper Making by Norris, F.H. 1952. Oxford, OUP.)

[If, like me, you love a Penrose click here for other posts.]

Typographers will be drawn to her work immediately, as I was – although she trained as a flower arranger in the Japanese sense of that term (ikebana), and only took to art in the mid-1970s. (She was born in New Zealand in 1917, moving to Oz in 1943.) Gascoigne collected – that is what she did, including scraps of signs she found on roads near her home, assembling them into sculptural entities, much as she used to ‘assemble’ floral arrangements.

She wrote in the catalogue: “Beware of nice things that you find that say nothing: they are like new wood from a hardware shop. I look for things that have been somewhere, done something. Second hand materials aren’t deliberate; they have had sun and wind on them. Simple things. From simplicity you get profundity…I am not making pictures, I make feelings…I want to make art without telling a story: it must be allusive, lyrical”.

The first piece shown here is titled Southerly buster (1995, 117cm x 115cm); the second is a detail from Far View of 1990 (three panels, total dimensions 89cm x 221cm) and is made of sawn soft drink crates.

There’s a lot to write about the history of watermarks, so this can serve to whet your appetites…

In the case of the Budd sign, probably simple advertising, although it is not easy to see and I have passed by that shop for years now without noting it. In fact, it was only when I was on the balcony of the recently renovated adjacent cinema a few weeks back that I spotted it.

The second example is more intriguing since it is purely decorative.

It reminds me of the illustration taken from Alan Bartram’s wonderful Lettering on Architecture (1975), shown here. I also think of Rome with its multitude of monumental signage, also pictured in Bartram’s text (pp 154-155).

Also see this blog on Ralph Beyer.

The typeface used is Monotype Van Dijck, set by hand.