Which institutional impressions are the right comparators for assessing wear in this one?

Every wear judgement is a comparison, and the comparison is only as good as the comparators. Building a short list of impressions that are securely catalogued by state, openly imaged at high resolution, and reusable under an open licence is a piece of work that helps anyone studying this plate, not only this project. It is the part of the census that is useful to scholars who have no interest in a privately held sheet.

The census holds 27 records. Openly licensed comparator images are now held for states I, II, III and IV. The state III gap was closed on 12 August 2026 by RISD Museum 84.198.1269 (CC0), which had been in the census since the first pass but with no state recorded, because the museum's disclosure panels render empty until opened and an earlier pass read that as an absent value. Coverage is now complete by state but uneven by resolution: the Rijksmuseum images are several thousand pixels on the long edge, RISD's is 1,122, which will not carry a drypoint comparison.

1. 01Populate the census from institutional collection records, recording each institution's own cataloguing verbatim.
2. 02Flag which records state a state, which expose an openly licensed image, and which expose a IIIF manifest that can be compared side by side.
3. 03Identify gaps by state and approach the institutions holding relevant impressions.

A census with at least one openly imaged, securely catalogued impression per state.

• No institution in this census publishes a IIIF manifest for a state III impression. RISD serves a single fixed-size derivative from a Picturepark CDN, 900 by 1,122 pixels, and offers no larger one.

  2026-08-12

• Impression census
• The comparator impressions, side by side

• RQ-02Is this impression New Hollstein 170, state III?
• RQ-09Does any drypoint burr survive in this impression, and what does the plate wear indicate?