The Watermarks’ Drawings Collection of József Kemény (c. 1845)
The project aims to explore and digitize a historical collection of watermarks, compiled around 1845 by the Transylvanian nobleman and poli-historian József Kemény (1795-1855). Spanning across three massive volumes, currently preserved at the Romanian Academy Library in Cluj-Napoca, the collection consists of drawings of watermarks gathered from charters, letters and printed books dated from the 14th to the 19th century.
Kemény’s collection of watermarks’ drawings is being converted into a digital database. This instrument will contain the images of watermarks, as well as descriptions of motifs.
As these drawings originate from a time when watermark research was still in its early stages of development, the current project will seek to determine the historiographical value of this 19th century collection, adding data according to up-to-date scientific requirements.
SIC (Signa Interna Chartarum) represents a Romanian-Austrian collaborative research initiative, established by Assoc. Prof. Adinel C. Dincă, PhD, Alexandru Ștefan, PhD (TRANS.SCRIPT – The Centre for Diplomatic and Medieval Documentary Palaeography, Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca), and Senior Researcher Emanuel Wenger, PhD (Institute of Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences).