The oldest form of watermarks are today referred to as “wire watermarks.” These were made by bending pieces of wire into filigree designs, tying them onto the mesh of the paper molds, and impressing them into the paper pulp while it was still damp. The comparative thinness of the areas which were pressed under this wire formed an image which only revealed itself when the paper was held up to light. Scholars seem to agree that watermarks of this kind are very nearly as old as papermaking itself.

The first known watermarks appeared toward the end of the 13th century, originating with the Albigensian papermakers of Southern France and Northern Italy. (Though papermaking as an industry is said to have first taken root in Spain ⊕ the first great center of the papermaking industry in Europe was actually in Italy, specifically in Fabiano in the marquisate of Ancona, where mills were set up in 1276.) Their use spread very quickly all throughout Europe.

The purpose of watermarks at the moment of their invention is unclear. My guess is that they were invented accidentally and initially used in the service of kings or nobles seeking to secure the provenance of their communications (or, thinking more imaginatively, possibly to embed secret messages). Alternately they might have initially served a more noble cause still- amusement.

More qualified postulators think that perhaps they were a means of distinguishing between papers made by different workmen within “factories” who were paid by the sheet. Other theories, of course, abound-

Quote: “The first watermarks… were artless in design, the emblems were so mystic in character that it is reasonable to believe that they were meant to convey a meaning or signal among the workers who fashioned them. It has been suggested that these old devices may have been used solely as marks of identification for sizes of moulds and the paper formed thereon, or, as they are used today, simply as trademarks of the papermakers. Other writers have advanced the theory that they may have been employed in a purely symbolic sense… employed by the heretical papermakers as symbols of religious propaganda… embodying a hidden meaning understood only by the people of medieval times.

It might be suggested that the old watermarks were little more than a capricious notion of the papermakers who may have created the designs to satisfy their own artistic feeling. Another supposition… was that since the workmen could not read or write it was essential to appeal to them by means of pictures. Simply to have marked a mould with letters or numerals would have conveyed but slight meaning to the illiterate artisans of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries; it was necessary to convey the meaning to them through the use of illustrations. For the same reason the signboards of inns and shops were of a pictorial nature inasmuch as the untutored populace could not have deciphered the lettered name had it been painted upon the swinging signs. -From THEOSOPHY, Vol. 53, No. 9, July, 1965.

Regardless of their origins watermarks were eventually adapted to be both trademarks (of a sort) for different paper-makers and a means of demarcating different types of paper, and batches, within their inventories. Today the oldest of watermarks are mainly used by conservators for dating documents and artworks. ⊕

The forms that these marks took were myriad and largely in-line with the common symbologies of the day, which is to say they were images commonly used in other spheres with meanings that were probably well understood by people of the time. Among them were all the expected animals (both terrestrial and fantastic), celestial objects, all manner of fruit and vegetable, tools, insects, flowers, crests, weapons, and symbolic bits–or indeed full on representations–of the human anatomy. By 1600 they had multiplied to the extent that individually identifiable watermarks numbered in the tens of thousands.

Though watermarking technology advanced quickly to allow for shades and complexity and greater detail I am personally most fond of these simple and somewhat naive forms which read like ancient pictograms or distracted doodles. They are infinitely more mysterious and, to my mind, more fittingly evocative of a craft practiced by skilled artisans utilizing callused hands.

For many many more examples and more information on the history of watermarking see the following-

Databases:
The Piccard watermark collection
Wasserzeichen des Mittelalters
Watermarks in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries
Watermarks in Incunabula printed in España
Mairie De Toulouse

Other:
Watermarks.info’s collection
British assoc. of paper historians
Motherbedford.com
Georgia Tech
Bates.edu
Theosophy, Vol. 53, No. 9
Whistler’s watermarks
Dürer’s watermarks
Dante’s watermarks
Make your own watermark.

Hope ye seekers, emphmeraphiles, and iconography thieves find something of interest in all that.

First a few words on the manuscript’s origins and possibly misleading title.

The Drake Manuscript is named for Sir Francis Drake, the famed English privateer, navigator, slave trader, politician, and pirate of the Elizabethan era, whose travels it is thought to illustrate. Though Drake was himself something of an artist ⊕, the images in Histoire Naturelle des Indes were not created by his hand. Nothing of his artwork survives as it turns out.

Truth be told there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that Drake had anything to do with the manuscript, let alone that it ought to be informally named after him. Such are the gears of history- grinding the anonymous down to invisibility and raising the famed higher… for a while at least.

The best guess as to the manuscripts origins are something along these lines-

The naive drawings ⊕ show signs of being created by several separate hands. Context reveals that these were likely the hands of Huguenots. Drake is known to have employed not only Huguenots on his voyages but artists as well. A “considerable number” of the images correspond to ports of call familiar to Drake, in some cases associated directly with his voyages, and Drake is mentioned by name, twice, in the manuscript itself. Hence, with a nice pile of circumstantial evidence to stand on, and no other clues, we have The Drake Manuscript.

Anyhow, whether this is simply an instance of a famous name capturing otherwise anonymous historical debris with its considerable gravitational pull ⊕ or simply an instance of fine deduction on the part of historians doesn’t matter much. What matters are the 199 fascinating images and accompanying captions.

Taken as a whole the images are an interesting mixture. The drawings of plants and animals are presented in a sort of cold practical manner, removed from their natural surroundings, with captions that read almost like a sales catalog, listing the virtues and drawbacks of each. ⊕ The drawings of the indigenous peoples themselves on the other hand are altogether warmer and seem to serve no greater purpose than curiosity.

The styles of the images are an interesting mixture as well-

Quote, “Some drawings are well rendered, others mere daubs, but most have a kind of buoyantly piquant vision of their subjects. Some are true to life, some–particularly the fishes with doglike snouts and ears–arise from an almost medieval fancy, and some may reflect a knowledge of printed sources.” - Verlyn Klinkenborg.

I’ve reproduced a group of the images below for your scrutiny. Some were chosen because I particularly liked the drawing, some because I was amused by the caption, and some because the ghost of Drake, boarding the deck of my apartment and holding me at sword-point, compelled me to. Have a look for yourself.

I find these fascinating, and believe me when I say I had trouble choosing from the 199 plates reproduced in the excellent facsimile.

Concerning the images themselves it amazes me to look at them in the artistic context of their time, because though I undoubtedly find them beautiful, when I remind myself that they were created in the 1590’s, and that at that same moment El Greco, Rubens, and Caravaggio were all active… well it’s surprising. Thought of in those terms it’s a wonder these weren’t made by the “Indians” themselves.

I think today, with television and advertising and graphic design having made the shared “visual language” so pervasive, we have a tendency to regard varying levels of visual sophistication simply as styles which homogeneously blanket entire eras, permeating everything from high art to life’s daily banalities. It may be true, to some degree, as far back as the 19th century, but images like those in the Drake Manuscript are, for me, a useful reminder that if you travel further back, our conceptions begin to break down and become little more than assumptions, based on the retrofitted categorizations art historians have coined for us.

The captions fascinate and amuse me for a similar reason. There is something comical to me about contemporaries of Shakespeare, Giordano Bruno, Cervantes, and Galileo ⊕ traveling to these “savage” lands, filled with a blustery and inalienable sense of their own superiority over the ignorant inhabitants, who upon arrival and lengthy inspection proceed to relay information as goofy and superstitious and folkloric ⊕ as their dark-age ancestors might have believed.

Of course, as not to fall into the same trap of egoistic presumption, and lest snide ephemera hunters of the 3000’s stumble upon this blog (attributing it, of course, to Markos Moulitsas or Xeni Jardin whilst my anonymous bones decay in quietude) and scoff at the wrong-mindedness of it all, I’ll shut my mouth right there.

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For a bit more on the manuscript see-

The Morgan Library page

Histoire naturelle des Indes on Google books.

This pdf from the National Humanities Center.

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I’ll only say this in closing, I enjoyed these and I hope you did as well.

Linotype was a hot-metal typesetting process, remember, so each of these images had to be carved, made into a mold, and cast in lead for use. Which is simply to say there was some actual effort involved in making them available. Yes folks, in the storied past even clip-art had to walk 20 miles, uphill, in the snow, to get anywhere.

I realize, of course, that these images were almost certainly not “official” logos and that they were likely just pulled from the vast storehouse of imagery Linotype had at their disposal. But the very fact that, in an election year, they chose to offer symbols for 10 possible parties means that there was enough demand to warrant a supply. Linotype is still going strong after all so I think we can trust their business acumen.

In any case here is the page-

Nice of them to set up a sample ballot wasn’t it?

Interestingly as it turns out their example here was not to different from the ballot that citizens saw in the Presidential election of that year. There were, in fact, candidates from 7 different parties represented. Granted the 5 who were not Democrat or Republican only garnered 5.5% of the vote as a group… but still.

If I were to update their page for the present day (taking demand into consideration when formulating our supply of course!) it might as well look like like this-

That’s no fun is it?

Now in the interest of full disclosure for those of you who weren’t paying close attention the last time around, in 2004 there actually were at least 10 parties represented on the ballot.

“10 you say?!”

Yes, 10. Minus the obvious those parties were the Libertarian, Constitution, Green, Socialist, Peace and Freedom, Prohibition, Christian Freedom, Socialist Equality, Workers World, and the Personal Choice Party.

Sounds just positively bustling and vibrant doesn’t it?

It doesn’t look so vibrant unfortunately. I mean when was the last time you saw the logo for the Socialist Equality Party emblazoned on one of the 20 massive HD screens which are continuously swirling and pulsating behind Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room? In fact, now that I think of it, have you ever seen any of their logos anywhere? ⊕

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

This sounds like a job for Linotype! They can dig into their vast stores of imagery once more for the American electorate and bring forth handsome and heroic emblems which in one bold stroke typify all that the parties stand for… these emblems can pepper posters and banners and bumper stickers across the entire expanse of this great nation and the ideals for which… oh wait, that’s right, there is no demand. Sorry.

These parties already have logos obviously, ⊕  it’s just that so few people care that we’ll never see them. “Miscellaneous characters” indeed.

Setting aside the socio-political ramifications of this essentially two-party system, let’s just say that from a visual standpoint it would seem we the people are stuck with the same dull, uninspiring,

elephant show.

Which brings me, finally, to the issue that I’m certain is gnawing at the young and idealistic designers reading this, who, like teary-eyed children listening to their parents discuss a dead puppy from the top of the stairs, are wondering about the those poor cast-aside logos from the 1920 Linotype catalog, which having once symbolized grand ideals now seem so hopelessly lost in the wilderness…

Let me just say this, you sweet and gentle kids- cry not!

Cry not for the Eagle or the 5 Pointed Star! Cry not for the Fountain or the Book or the Moose! Nay child; cry not for the Torch, the Scales, the Bell or the Strong Arm because in America… in America we graphics professionals see to it that no logo is left behind!

There. Feel better? Good. Now here’s some warm milk, off to sleep with you, daddy’s got a whole lot of whiskey he needs to swallow.

Any telling of the revolving door’s story must begin with the name Bockhacker, though the length of the tale which follows it varies considerably. German door historians, or “Türherstellers” as they are reverently called, will, to a man, offer the following information as regards the revolving door-

• H. Bockhacker of Berlin was granted German patent 18349 on December 22, 1881 for “thür ohne luftzug” or “door without draft of air.”

And… well, that’s about as far as their interest in the subject goes.

Outside of Germany the tale is different. All the great door histories (like De Grote Geschiedenis van Deuren and Il Glory dei Portelli) mention Bockhacker, of course, ⊕ but then shift focus to one Theophilus Van Kannel, of Philadelphia, who in 1888 was granted US patent 387,571 for a “storm-door structure.” The true story of the revolving door, both known and forgotten, is more than anything the story of Van Kannel.

Some commonly known facts about Van Kannel and his revolving door include:

• It is perfectly noiseless.

• It effectually prevents the entrance of, snow, rain or dust.

• It cannot be blown open by the wind.

• It excludes street noise.

• Persons can pass both in and out at the same time.

• It prevents a direct path between the interior and exterior of a structure, making it useful as a partial airlock, minimizing heat-loss.

• It circumvents all that annoying “You first” “No, you first” stuff.

• The world’s first revolving door was installed at Rector’s, a restaurant in Manhattan’s Times Square, located on Broadway between west 43rd and 44th streets, in 1899.

Some largely forgotten facts about Van Kannel and his revolving door include:

• The original slogan for his door was “always closed.”

• It was marketed (in the Victorian manner) as helping to avoid “noxious effluvia” and “baleful miasmas.” Van Kannel himself authored a pamphlet which included the following: “It will save life, by preventing those deadly lung and throat diseases which are sure to overtake the unfortunate salesman, cashier, or clerk whose duty keeps him near the constantly opening front door.”

• Van Kannel was an irritable sort. In response to the initial reaction to his door he had this to say: “Just like a turn-stile, so say nine out of ten persons who first see it. As well may we say a tea-kettle is like a locomotive boiler.”

• Van Kannel originally intended his invention to be installed not only in public buildings but in private homes as well.

Which brings us to the crux of things-

That Van Kannel’s invention turned out to be useful, in the ways we consider it to be so today, is something of a happy accident. That’s not to say the inventor didn’t have a purpose in mind, he spent years perfecting his idea after all, but if you were to run down the list of its touted benefits you’d be forgiven for never coming upon the intended one.

More than anything the world owes the invention of the revolving door to revenge.

It seems that when Van Kennel was a boy, still in the care of his mother but just on the cusp of cultural manhood, he found the lingering rules of chivalry rather bothersome. In particular he refused to accept that he was expected to open the door for women and allow them to cross the threshold before him.

A silly sort of quirk to our minds, certainly, but it was taken seriously enough by his mother that after numerous warnings and threats she eventually felt compelled to take action. Van Kennel family histories have it that at some point in his twelfth year she administered a savage bare-bottomed spanking, during a salon in the family’s drawing room, in full and explicit view of 37 local mothers and daughters.

This very public shaming over what amounted to a matter of chivalry stuck with Van Kannel (no wonder- “Spankophilus” being a whisper that seemed to dog his steps for years afterward) and, far from teaching him a lesson, embittered him even further toward the “gentlemanly” behavior polite society required.

Had this been the only episode the world may have never had a revolving door to shuffle through. As it so happens, however, Theophilus Van Kennel married a woman who, though beautiful and slyly clever, had an odd and stubborn quirk of her own.

Young Abigail Van Kennel, it seems, refused to pass from one room of their apartments to another without the assistance of Theophilus. As a biographer later explained: She was willing to make many concessions to the new modern ways, but her mother had taught her to take matters of chivalry very seriously indeed. “Manners are the measure of a man!” she’d said “More so than his inseam, rest assured!”

Needless to say Theophilus was unaware of this outlook when he took Abigail as his wife, and was none to pleased at finding it out on their honeymoon. The result amounted to a battle of wills, fought atop a mountain, which to onlookers looked suspiciously like a mole-hill.
 
Theophilus had on one occasion tried to put his foot down on the matter, telling his wife in the morning, “all this opening doors twaddle just will not do! I can not be rushing around my own home to usher you from room to room! You are a grown woman and can locomote perfectly well on your own.” after which he stormed out of the house. He returned home in the evening only to find Abigail sitting defiantly just inside the bedroom door, right where he’d left her.

With the ugliness of Fate’s sense of humor now blindingly apparent, Van Kennel, incensed and stubborn as an ill mannered he-goat, devoted his full focus to finding some way to sidestep this rule of chivalry, or even, perhaps, create cause for a complete revision of the rules. 3 years and $9,837 later he found his answer in what we now call “the revolving door.”

You see, contrary to what you might think, the revolving door was not designed to keep out snow, or to minimize heat loss (though that it does both certainly lead to its success). Theophilus had something different in mind.

The revolving door was designed specifically so that whomever enters the door first is obliged to do all the pushing! This was Theophilus’ breakthrough. He saw immediately that with his design it would actually be most chivalrous for the man to proceed through the door first. He hoped that, without being reduced to stating it baldly, people would recognize this fact, and that when they did, presto! door-holding would be relegated to the stinking, festering, and massive compost heap of history.

He did not count on this eventuality of course, having learned by then that traditions could, and traditionally did, prove irrationally tenacious. His design addressed this, however, and he was satisfied by the private knowledge that with his door at least, the act of obliging women first passage would be, in point of fact, the act of obliging them to open the door for you!

His own home, as well as the home of his mother, were outfitted with the first 14 revolving doors ever assembled.

In the years that followed, after his invention had taken root, though the tiresome rules of chivalry showed no sign of adapting, the loophole he’d so cleverly engineered amused him to no end. He’d walk past buildings in which his doors had been installed and laugh. He thought of the women all over New York being ushered dutifully into revolving doors by browbeaten sons and husbands, all proclaiming with a twinkle in their eyes, “No, no, after you!”

And that my friends is the true, very nearly forgotten, secret history of the revolving door.

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Disclosure: Most factual bits of this post were gleaned from James Buzard’s piece Perceptual Revolution while all untruths are, I assure you, my own. I’ll leave it to you to sort out which is which. 

Hope You enjoyed.

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Note: This post is in a series of reworkings of old posts which date from before the redesign of The Nonist. The links have been updated, the text has been reworked, and the images are all new. I will be periodically adding these reworkings into the flow of new content in an effort to eventually remove all the old pages from circulation.

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In 1907, the Osaka-based journalist Miyatake Gaikotsu began publishing The World of Illustrated Postcards (Ehagaki Sekai) as a colour supplement to his monthly Humorous Journal (Kokkei Shinbun). This supplement took the form of a printed sheet of card, folded into an eight-page booklet, containing thirty postcards. Each card bore a colour design and a caption. In some cases the humour was straightforwardly coarse, in others, confusingly obscure: many readers are supposed to have complained of images they were unable to understand accompanied by captions that seemed to cast no light on them.

Gaikotsu was born Miyatake Kameshiro in Kagawa prefecture in 1867. His assumed surname means skeleton or skull. He launched his first satirical magazine at the age of 20. An article parodying the Emperor earned him, in 1889, a fine and the first of four prison sentences. Undeterred, Gaikotsu started the Kokkei Shinbun in 1901. It was a popular success, but his lampoons of police chiefs, dishonest businessmen and corrupt journalists attracted numerous fines and threats: at length, Gaikotsu voluntarily shut the paper down in 1909, ending it with a ‘Suicide Issue.’

I scanned these images from the current issue of FMR magazine, in which, in an essay about Gaikotsu and his postcards, Enrico Sturani writes: “Of those who created [the postcards], only one was known as an artist; the others were chosen from among the contributors to the Humorous Journal, possibly from among the printers, or among the public itself. But it was Miyatake who set the tone, either by choosing the sketches to be published, or by inviting a couple of the most prolific draughtsmen to accompany him to the baths to discuss new subjects, and ways of representing them.”

Besides commissioning postcards, Gaikotsu also collected them: he compiled more than two hundred albums of cards, many of them grouped thematically. There are, for example, albums devoted to women’s hairstyles, to illustrations of fruit, of clouds, and ‘curious things.’ There are albums of specially handmade postcards, of foreign postcards, of commemorative postcards. Even in the privacy of his collection, there is evidence of Gaikotsu’s satirical temperament in one album’s title: ‘Military Men - those who have destroyed Japan.’

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Thanks Aitch!

About all I can add to that is to say searches for more info on Gaikotsu, in English at least, don’t turn up much info. One thing I noticed, however, is that he does get mentioned in quite a few papers and articles dealing with Japanese sexuality at the turn of the last century. This seems to be for a couple of reasons-

For one he was a journalist with a decidedly mischievous bent and relayed many stories of daily life in the late Mejii and early Taisho periods which, because of their intention to amuse, reveal details which would otherwise likely go unreported.

The second reason are the postcards themselves.

Quote: “During the 1910’s, japanese porno-kitch was at it’s zenith. the artist and satirist Gaikotsu (Skeleton) Miyakatake filled his famous Kokkei Shinbun (Comic Newspaper) with a wealth of sexual innuendo… There were phallo-vuvlar symbols and all kinds of hints at sexual pastimes and phenomena- the most daring probably being the maid with with the japanese flag wrapped around her waist and carrying a sign saying “Today we are closed for a holiday”. The hint at monthly indisposition was suggested by having the red sun placed directly over her genital area. It can hardly have endeared Miyatake to the authorities; it pointed to a certain dissent in attitude, if not fact.”  -Fran Lioyd, Consuming Bodies: Sex and Contemporary Japanese Art.

Lastly I offer the following paltry bit of linkage for those wanting to explore further-

Postcard Guide Japan on Kokkei Shimbun postcards

MFA Boston’s Art of the Japanese Postcard which ostensibly has a large collection of works from Kokkei Shimbun, but whose images seem not to be loading.

Itami City Musum of Art [Japanese] which is evidently having a Gaikotsu show later this month, and the Kawasaki City Museum [Japanese] which had one fairly recently.

The Japanese wikipedia page for Gaikotsu

This odd Video

Amazon.jp offers at least 4 “pocketbook edition” collections of Gaikotsu’s work that I’ve been able to identify, though they are, of course, in Japanese.


From both Aitch and I-
Hope you enjoyed.