Charles-Moïse Briquet

Swiss archivist and author of Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques de papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600 (1907), assembled over roughly thirty years of archival travel and still the standard repertory of the field — the "Briquet number" remains the working reference system for a watermark's identity. He matters to this vault as the foundational figure any specific date for the watermark's origin ultimately traces back to: his own titlepage hedges "1282" with vers ("around"), and his own marginal annotation for entry no. 5410 — the earliest-dated watermark in his repertory, and the likely ultimate source of the popular "1282" figure — carries a question mark, with the entry itself sourced to Bologna rather than confirmed as Fabriano.

References

• claim-briquet-1907-catalog-title-hedges-fabriano-date-as-vers-1282 — his own titlepage qualifier
• claim-briquet-entry-5410-earliest-watermark-question-mark-and-bologna-provenance — his own marginal uncertainty and the Bologna/Fabriano mismatch
• claim-watermarks-originated-as-papermakers-mark-in-fabriano-1282 — the claim his catalog is the ultimate source of