Research into Watermarks at the British Museum

Tony Higgins and Janet Lang

This article is based on a paper given at the CHArt Conference in 1993. It relates the initial findings of recent research into the automatic recording of watermarks from the papr of predominantly 17th century drawings from the collection of the British Museum. X- and beta-radiographic techniques are used to record the watermark in paper, and the radiographs are scnned for image processing. Two methods for the processing of the radiographs, mathematical morphology and Fourier transforms, are discussed.