Bunch of grapes

Watermark. A design worked in wire into the papermaking mould, visible as a thinner, brighter area when the sheet is held to the light. Because papermakers' moulds were in use for limited periods, an identified watermark can narrow the years in which a sheet of paper — and therefore an impression printed on it — was made.

For this mark the census carries 1 transcription:

• grapes (record reads 'Watermark:grapes' and 'Marks: Watermark:bunch of grapes') — RISD Museum (Rhode Island School of Design), 84.198.1269

No record of this mark on an impression of this plate cites a Hinterding variant, so there is no published variant designation to transcribe and none is supplied. A name without a variant does not narrow a date.

It would date the paper, and only the paper. A watermark identified to a mould gives the years that mould was in use. It does not give the year the plate was printed: paper can be stored, and a plate can be printed decades after the sheet was made. Anything stronger than a bound would be an overclaim.

It would not by itself settle the state. The catalogue does not name this mark in any state’s paper list, so there is nothing in the catalogue to match it against. It would be a fact about the paper with no state attached.

The state attribution would still be unconfirmed. The record’s position on this sheet is unchanged by anything on this page: it is catalogued by the auction house as New Hollstein 170, state III of IV; state II is not excluded; the work visible in state III is not Rembrandt’s; and the date this sheet was printed is unknown. The determination that would move it is a specialist reading the line-work against the catalogue’s diagnostic features, not a watermark.

And it would have to be recorded first. Photography with the light source behind the sheet rather than in front of it, so the paper's own structure — laid lines, chain lines, watermarks, thinning, repairs — becomes visible. It is the standard way to record a watermark, and it requires a conservator's judgement about handling. That imaging has not been done, and it is sequenced after a conservator has looked at the sheet’s current housing.