U395 With Watermark 14 Oriented On Laid Lines

Hello,

I have this part of an envelope with a U395 and have a question about the watermark. As you can see in the photo, the watermark 14 ("US 1903") is oriented exactly as the laid lines. Unfortunately I only have this small piece of watermark to show but it is visible.

What I understood so far about US stationery:
- the laid lines are diagonally for envelopes and horizontally for wrappers (mostly)
- the watermark is horizontally/vertically for envelopes and diagonally for wrappers (mostly)

But in all those cases the watermark is not oriented with the laid lines but diagonally to the laid lines, due to the production of the envelopes.

I think in my case this can't be an error of the operator with the knife as the position of the knife does not change the orientation of the watermark concerning the laid lines. So my guess would be that the laid lines were directly in the dandy role, in opposite to the other cases of US envelopes where the laid lines come from the screen.

Is there any information about all this, maybe the U395 (and others?) had another production configuration?

The same is true for example for this U400, see photo.

Either I need a larger reference collection (probably) or I just did not look close enough at my envelopes until now.

I only know the way the envelopes were produced from the beginning on, and so I thought that the laid lines come from the wire and the watermark from the dandy role (watermark and lines not aligned). Interesting article about all that: https://www.upss.org/assets/images/pdf/reay.pdf

So was there a change in production later, and if yes, from when?

You are seeing the bottom of the "U" of the "US". That indicates a normal watermark when compared to dozens of other U395s.

Thank you. Yes, that is what I wrote above by saying it's a watermark 14. In my second photo with the different envelope we can see the watermark better (wmk. 15). But I am not searching for the watermark or whether my watermark is normal or not. I was wondering about the production of the paper, as at the beginning the watermark (dandy role) was diagonally to the paper, and so the laid lines.

When did this change, so was there a production change and all envelopes of a certain time or design were then made with the watermark aligned with the paper laid lines?

The laid lines (finer and closer together of the two types found in laid paper) run parallel with the web coming out of the paper machine.

The chain lines (thicker and much more widely spaced of the two) are oriented 90% to the laid lines.

Both are produced by wires forming the dandy roll.

Watermark designs are welded onto the dandy roll.

Early on, watermarks exhibited several different orientations relative to the laid lines. The following is from a late 19th century book on U.S. Envelopes:

Thank you for your answer and the image (which shows the first watermark when indeed there was still some experimenting going on).

(In the PDF I linked above, the laid lines are supposed to be made on the wire side - there seems to be some open points about this?)

The wire side would match the scenatio: They changed soon at the beginning the orientation of the knifes on the paper so that there would be less paper waste. That's why the laid lines are diagonal on the envelopes. But the watermark should be still horizontal (readable), so they decided to put the watermark diagonally on the dandy role. In this case, the watermark and the laid lines are not aligned, from watermark 1 on, after 1a.

Why should they ever have done this different again in later years - I think it was a good way to produce envelopes? Were the laid lines later included on the dandy role?

As said, unfortunately I don't have a large reference collection, so I can't do my own research to look if at a certain point in time the watermark was aligned with the lines. But nearly all envelopes I have seen, have them not aligned (which can be explained easily like above).

I can understand that the orientation of the watermark in relation to the envelope can be different due to the different positioning of the knife or paper, but the orientation of the watermark to the laid lines can't be just switched normally.