IDL, ILC, WILC: Gerard van Thienen's contributions to the study of incunabula

Abstract

Much of the scholarly career of Gerard van Thienen fits within three acronyms, each a major project in which he took the leading role: IDL (Incunabula in Dutch Libraries), ILC (Incunabula printed in the Low Countries), and WILC (Watermarks in Incunabula printed in the Low Countries). The first two of these projects fit within a long tradition of Dutch book scholarship, with roots going back ultimately to the 1767 Naamlyst of Jakob Visser, and advanced in the twentieth century particularly by Wytze and Lotte Hellinga, whose pupil Van Thienen was. The third project, WILC, is a reference tool of a new kind, whose uses extend far beyond the Low Countries. And yet it too has its roots in Dutch scholarship, for it brings to realization hopes for the exploitation of watermark evidence expressed in 1917 by Father Bonaventura Kruitwagen, and then more directly by Wytze Hellinga in a letter written to Allan Stevenson in I964.