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Chapter 13. Paper And Watermarks

The manufacture of paper is one of the oldest arts known to mankind and remains today basically one of the simplest arts. It is of interest to the stamp collector principally because of the watermarks and some of the special papers used for making some nineteenth-century postage stamps. Presently "ordinary" paper with or without the watermark is used universally throughout the world for making postage stamps.

Basically paper is made by reducing wood fiber to a pulp and then spreading this pulp evenly on a surface to dry. Almost all modern paper is made from wood pulp to which rag or other fibers may, or may not, have been added. Straw of various kinds, papyrus and other vegetable fibers have also been used but today such special papers are seldom used in the ordinary channels of commerce.

The wood fiber may be reduced to pulp in various ways. The logs may be placed in hydraulic presses and forced against millstones or they may be chipped into small pieces and "digested" with chemicals. In either process a great deal of water is used, so paper mills are almost always located along a river which may be diverted through the plant to provide the power to drive the machinery and, more important, to provide the flux that carries the pulp through the required processes.

Other than the very few cases where paper is still handmade principally as a hobby or for demonstration purposes all paper is made on a Fourdrinier Paper Making Machine or a development of that machine.

It is during the process of making paper that the watermark is applied. The pulp in a highly saturated state passes through "beaters", "digesters" and other machines where it is given its sizing and the proper chemicals are added to bleach, color and otherwise prepare it. When ready the pulp is allowed to flow upon a fast-moving screen which, by oscillation and shaking removes a considerable quantity of the water. Near the end of this endless screen there is suspended a hollow cylinder called a "dandy roll", the purpose of which is to squeeze more water from the pulp.

Watching a machine in operation one sees only a wet surface moving rapidly toward the dandy roll but leaving the roll, as if by magic, one sees the partially formed paper rapidly moving toward the drying rolls. These latter are a battery of large-diameter steam-heated rolls over which passes a cloth belt or "blanket". After passing under the dandy rolls the now partially dry paper passes almost immediately to the drying process. It is picked up by the blanket and travels over and around each drying roll in such a manner that both sides are presented to the surface of each roll during the process. Upon leaving the drying rolls the paper is completed. It may be wound directly upon cores or it may pass through a calendar to give it a finish before being wound on cores. But once over the drying rolls the paper is, to all intents and purposes, "made". It can be further processed by converters and various finishes applied for special purposes such as "linen finish" writing paper, "coated paper", etc.

Fourdrinier machine.

Other than the fancy finishes which are given to the finished or partially finished paper, the process remains the same and is tremendously fast. It is a worth-while sight to visit a paper mill and watch a veritable forest being fed into the maw of this monster only to come out the other end a continuous roll of paper as much as 120 inches wide and traveling almost a mile a minute!

The stamp collector's primary concern is with two stages of this process.

First, the dandy roll. This cylinder applies to the wet pulp the finish that we describe as "wove" or "laid" paper. If the cylinder is made of a wire screen in which the horizontal wires are equal in number to the vertical wires as, for instance, ordinary mosquito netting then the pulp that passes under it will be known as "wove" paper. If the surface of the roll is made up of parallel wires held in place by widely spaced supporting wires, the pulp passing under it will be known as "laid" paper., i.e. the lines of the dandy roll will appear as laid parallel to each other. The supporting wires, which also show up on laid paper, are called "batonnes" and we have "laid batonne"; or if the wires are close to each other we call the result "laid quadrille", or plain "quadrille" paper.

"Wove" paper. "Laid" paper.

"Dandy roll".

Both laid and wove paper are, of course, actually watermarked paper for the laid lines or the even texture we see, when holding the paper before a light, is the result of the surface of the Dandy Roll being pressed into the wet pulp. However, watermarks are actually an added device. Small bits of metal, called "bits", are stamped out in required design and soldered or wired to the surface of the Dandy Roll. This can, and often is, done on either a wove or a laid-surface dandy roll. But whether on wove or laid paper, if there be a watermarked device, collectors refer to the paper as "watermarked".

There are then four distinctive descriptions used by collectors in describing the paper upon which stamps are printed:

Laid
Wove
Laid, watermarked
Wove, watermarked

In addition to the watermarks that are intentionally impressed into the wet pulp from the dandy roll, there is an additional watermark of interest to stamp collectors. This is the "stitch" watermark. In appearance it resembles a row of stitches, which are exactly what caused it. The "stitch" watermark, of importance on some early United States stamps, is caused by the blanket which carries the partially dry pulp over the drying rolls. This blanket, or more correctly a "belt", is stitched at various places to hold it together. When this line of stitches happens to strike the partially wet pulp at or near the point when the pulp passes from the Fourdrinier screen to the drying rolls and the paper is then in a very wet stage thestitches of the blanket will impress themselves into the paper and cause an additional, and unintentional, watermark. As the blanket is extremely long, running some hundreds of feet, and may not be stitched for a considerable length, the "stitch" watermark will occur only at infrequent intervals. Hence, when discovered on a stamp, it is often prized by collectors.

Almost without exception the watermarks on postage stamps are thin spots impressed into the wet pulp. When held before a light, these thin spots show up as lighter areas than the rest of the paper. Everyone is familiar with this form of watermark as it occurs on "bond" paper, used extensively for typewriter paper. The exact reverse of this watermark is also possible a watermark in which the designs attached to the dandy roll cause a thick spot in the paper. This form of watermarking is often called a "shadow" mark. Stamp collectors are familiar with it on some of the early stamps of Russia. Carried to its ultimate development the shadow mark can be of greatest artistic quality and the most beautiful pictures may be reproduced within the paper by this process.

Generally the watermarks used on paper on which postage stamps are printed are very small designs, often arranged so that at least one complete design will fall on every printed stamp. In some instances the watermarks are so placed on the paper that each completed design will fall exactly upon each individual stamp. Hence, some of the early stamps of Great Britain will show a watermark consisting of a tiny rose, a thistle, and a shamrock, each of which appears in one of the corners of the stamp. An early Mexican envelope shows a very beautiful watermark of the coat of arms of the country so placed that it falls exactly within the center of the finished envelope. Such watermarks require careful placement of the bits upon the dandy roll and meticulous registering of his plates by the printer.

Watermarks were originally adopted as a precaution against counterfeiting, and careful registering so that the designs would fall on specified areas of the finished stamp was once considered worth the extra work and expense involved. However, it was very soon discovered that this extra work was not practical from an economic standpoint so watermarks were applied in an all-over design groupings of letters or repetition of designs. Our own United States stamps were watermarked with the letters "USPS" [United States Postal Service] in large outline letters from 1895 to about 1910. Only a single letter would appear on an individual stamp, or perhaps parts of two or more letters according to how the printing happened to fall upon the paper.About1910 this watermark was changed to smaller single-line letters but spaced wider apart so that again only a single letter or parts of several letters would appear on an individual stamp. After 1916 the use of watermarked paper was abandoned by the United States Post Office. On the other hand, from the very first issue all stamps of the British Empire have been printed on watermarked paper.

Double-line watermark. Single-line watermark

Sometimes a watermark may be a large coat of arms covering a large area of paper and, of course, stamps printed on such paper will show only the very smallest part of the whole design. Such watermarks would be described by collectors as "Watermarked Coat of Arms in the Sheet".

In addition to watermarks and different kinds of paper, collectors identify their stamps by the texture or color of the papers upon which they are printed. Hence, we have "granite" paper and "silk" paper, both of which are made from paper in which small particles of silk thread are introduced into the pulp. When these pieces of thread are so well chopped up as not to be discernible to the eye the paper is called "granite", and when the silk threads are merely short pieces, such as may be seen in any dollar bill, the paper is known as "silk".

Watermarks used for 19th century U.S. envelopes.

Watermarks on stamps of Great Britain and Commonwealth.

In Great Britain a special paper was used for the first, "Mulready", envelopes and for some other stamp issues. This was a paper into the pulp of which had been introduced a continuous silk thread or threads. Sometimes this is called "Dickinson" paper after the name of the inventor of the process but usually it is known to collectors as "paper with silk threads".

As with watermarks, all of these various kinds of special paper were introduced as safeguards against counterfeiting. Almost all have been discarded by governments issuing stamps although the watermark is still used extensively.

Generally speaking, such counterfeiting as has been done has been directed toward swindling collectors. There are very few instances on record where stamps have been counterfeited to swindle governments. Some instances of defrauding a government have, of course, been noted for instance, the so-called "Chicago" counterfeit of the United States two cent stamp. The counterfeits of these were printed in sheets, just like those made by the Government, and sold to users of mail who did not know they were counterfeit. Of course, the persons actually buying the stamps either knew or could suspect that they were counterfeit but the firms themselves that used the stamps had no knowledge. To market counterfeits of this sort it is necessary to involve mail clerks of firms using large quantities of stamps, and not only is the practice dangerous to the counterfeiter, who can never be sure that he will not be exposed, but also the returns are rather negligible for the risk and work involved. Hence, the fear of large-scale frauds against the Government, which were of such concern to officials during the nineteenth century, has largely disappeared. And the adoption of special papers and similar devices has practically been abandoned as too costly and unnecessary. Paper may be, and often is, dyed various colors and used to give printed stamps a distinctly different look. The United States has used many colors of paper for its stamped envelopes principally to please users who wish something distinctive. Prior to World War II, this practice of having various-colored envelopes had been slowly cut down to the point that only three colors were available white, amber (a yellowish color) and blue. As a conservation measure all but white paper envelopes were dropped from the schedules with the advent of the war and the colors have never been restored to use. Incidentally, we have noted that all United States envelopes have been printed on watermarked paper. This watermark serves a particular purpose in identifying the manufacturer of the paper and also the quality of the paper. It will come as a surprise to many that until recently you could purchase envelopes in either of two qualities of paper "standard" or "extra quality". The latter are the kind you received when you purchased one or more at a Post Office window. Should you have wished a box of envelopes, however, and to save a few cents on their cost you could have ordered "standard quality". However, this, too, has been discontinued. Today our stamped envelopes are produced of one quality only and on white paper only.

The so-called "bluish" paper of the United States 1908 issue of stamps is not caused by a dye, but rather by a high rag content introduced into the paper as an experiment.

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