It is some years now since I added a page for a beautiful mould from Tumba in Sweden containing this beautiful water mark.
See this link
At the time I wrote "I do not know why Tumba use the beehive as their symbol but this is a particularly lovely mark with the wreath of flowers and the bees."
Last week I had an email with the answer:
"You remarked that you do not know why Tumba use a beehive and I think I can shed some light in this.
In the 17th century my early ancestors were involved in producing among other things oil, paint, whale oil, but mainly paper. In those days white paper was a prized commodity and in 1665 a paper mill was built named De Veenboer. It produced paper made from rags. But in 1709 the mill was sold to Cornelis Honig and Jan Honig, who started making white paper. This was a protected technique and it had a watermark in it of a beehive, since the surname Honig means honey. The name of the mill was changed into The Beehive (De Bijenkorf) upon purchase. Now, between the years of 1750 and 1760, three brothers (Jan, Erasmus, and Casper Mulder) who were working in the mill, illegally sold this technique to the Swedish State Bank. The Swedes apparently suffered a lot from conterfeit money and this technique put a stop to that. Jan was caught and was imprisoned for a long time, Erasmus was able to escape to Sweden where his other brother, Casper joined him. Apparently they did well in their new home country. Until deep into the 19th century, Swedish bank paper was made using this Zaandam method, recognizable by the image of the Honig family businesses.
I hope you have found this a bit of an interesting read. Please have a good week.
Kind regards,
Victor Honig
Zutphen - The Netherlands"
Thank you very much Victor.
