Cancel – Cuneiform

Countermark: A second watermark that often serves to indicate the papermaker’s identity. Countermarks commonly include the date, though one should be careful about trusting it: a 1741 French law requiring all French papermakers to include a date in their countermarks failed to specify that the date had to change or be accurate. Many papermakers were quick to exploit the loophole and simply used 1742 as their date for several years.