Background

The study of Rembrandt's prints has occupied scholars for over two centuries. With several thousand impressions in existence today, the study of his printing papers occupies a prominent place within this scholarship. Rembrandt's prints were predominantly executed on antique laid papers. Until the widespread adoption of the papermaking machine in the early nineteenth century, paper was made by scooping up macerated and suspended paper pulp from a vat using a rectangular mould comprised of a porous screen surrounded by a removable wooden frame. Prior to 1750, the screen was fabricated from fine, densely spaced horizontal rows of laid wires secured by thicker, more widely spaced vertical chain wires. When the mould was plunged into the vat and lifted out, the wires acted as a sieve, filtering out the pulp in thinner and thicker accumulations depending upon how much interference they produced as the water drained through. The crisscrossed pattern of chain and laid lines is thus replicated in the final sheet of paper. Because the paper is thinner in areas corresponding to the wire grid, the laid and chain line pattern can be easily seen when the paper is held up to the light. Two papers will have identical laid and chain line patterns if they have been formed at the same time in the same manner on the same mould – hence they are called mouldmates.