Wednesday, May 18, 2011

watermark HIBERNIA

I've never seen this watermark before.  It is on the end sheets of our 1667 edition of Micrographia.  I've got a nifty fiber optic sheet that will back light paper and allow me to take a photo for sharing.

I've got a couple of leads on this paper, but more would be appreciated! 

I don't quite know whether knowing the source of endsheet paper will affect the decision making process for treatment, but we have no provenance information related to this book so any information is progress.  My first lead, from a colleague at the Dibner Library, told me that the watermark is from Moses Verney who had a mill in Whitechurch Ireland in the later half of the 18th century, which tells me that the remnants of the binding/sewing that I did remove were probably not the original binding of the book. 

It's a start!

2 comments:

atthebench said...

from my incredibly resourceful friend Angela:
In 1756 William Mondett and Moses Verney came from England and built a paper mill at Whitechurch at a cost of £1,400

and
Moses Verney, bookseller, was a listed "subscriber" to David Hume's The History of England.

So this means that the remnant binding I took off the book could not have been a contemporary (with the printing) binding since those endpapers didn't exist for almost another hundred years!

atthebench said...

the first lead from Kirsten:
Hey, looks like it's Irish, 2nd half of c18 - handily featured on the cover of The Irish Book, and credited to Moses Verney in Dublin.