Allan Stevenson

print-historywatermarkshistoriographymethodology

20th-century bibliographer who formulated the "runs and remnants" rule for dating paper by its watermarks: paper consistently marked across a larger run is more reliably dated than an isolated sheet, which may be a remnant recycled at a later date. Formulated with reference to printed books (per Neil Harris and Ilaria Pastrolin's report of him, in "Watermarks are Twins," Studies in Bibliography, 1951 — not yet read directly in this vault), the rule is now the vault's named explanation for why two separate disputed "clean" origin dates — Fabriano's popularized 1282 and the Bank of England's popularized 1697 watermark adoption — each rest on a single surviving specimen rather than a corroborating run, and are weaker evidence than their round dates suggest.

References

• claim-stevenson-runs-and-remnants-rule-explains-isolated-watermark-specimens-as-weak-evidence