Papermaker Katie MacGregor’s structure of cellulose watermark.  (C6H10O5)n  rules!
The Coolest Watermark Ever
The Ugliest Machine-made Paper?
The Franklin Paper Co. Franklin Inlaid Sample book. Early-Mid 20th c.
Handmade paper generally has chain and laid lines. These were originally aspects formed by the making of paper, though are artificially replicated in machine made papers. What is called “fake” chain and laid lines are, in fact, thinner deposits of pulp in the paper, often made by a dandy roll. The chain and laid lines in the Franklin Inlaid paper are beyond fake, however. They are printed on the surface of the paper. The chain and laid lines in this paper were available in four colors.
The Franklin Paper Co. Franklin Inlaid Sample book. Early-Mid 20th c. Enlarged Detail.
As someone who routinely works with paper, I feel confident in describing this paper as pretty ugly. The chain and laid lines look more like mortar between brickwork than a thinner deposit of pulp.
But in the top image, if I can forget these are supposed to be chain and laid lines, it looks pretty good. With the expansive letterspacing, the chain and laid lines function as a ghostly background image. A faked material aspect of paper becomes part of the image.
Paper, Paper, Paper
Before Jacques Derrida died, he used to teach a yearly seminar for grad students at New York University, which I managed to sit in on in the late 90’s.  It was completely over my head, but it was an intellectual roller-coaster that I will never forget.  I could barely remember where I lived after listening to him for a while.  One of his later books, Paper Machine, deals largely with paper and  books.
Included in the book is an interview, where he was asked to what extent paper functions as multimedia, and how paper has influenced his work.  Derrida responds:
Seeing all these questions emerging on paper, I have the impression (the impression!–what a word, already) that I have never had any other subject: Â basically paper, paper , paper. Â It could be demonstrated, with supporting documentation and quotations, “on paper”: I have always written, and even spoken, on paper: on the subject of paper, an actual paper, and with paper in mind. Â Support, subject, surface, mark, trace, written mark, inscription, fold–these were also themes that gripped me by a tenacious certainty, which goes back forever but has been more and more justified and confirmed, that the history of this “thing,” this thing that can be felt, seen and touched, and thus contingent, paper, will have been a brief one. Â Paper is evidently the limited “subject ” of a domain circumscribed in the time and space of a hegemony that marks out a period in the history of a technology and in the history of humanity. (p. 41)
Although he wrote this in 2001, it is remarkable how prescient he was, given the recent revolution in ebook readers: the Sony reader, the Kindle and the Nook.
Derrida, Jacques. Paper Machine. Trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Peachey Conservation 