---
title: "Allan Stevenson"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Allan Stevenson"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-12T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["watermark dating methodology","runs and remnants rule","Briquet Reloaded","Neil Harris","paper-history source criticism"]
tags: ["print-history","watermarks","historiography","methodology"]
seek_code_commit: "729ee25"
---


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]]