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This work is devoted to the study of the composition of such a characteristic object for the 17–19 centuries as wafers, which were used to join sheets of paper in documents or to seal letters. Owing to the limited information in the literature and possible degradation processes that may occur with them in this paper, the modern optical techniques were applied to gain information about them. As the object of the investigation the wafers found in the hand-written documents of Academician Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (Vasily Yakovlevich Struve 1793–1864) were chosen (Fund number 721, the RAS Archive, Saint-Petersburg branch, Struve V.). Besides the common way it was found that a large number of colored wafers were used to join several sheets in one composite elongated document and also to make correction on top of what was written. As the part of a major task aimed at maintaining the fund documents dated 19th century and the stability of the used joining wafers in particular the Raman and UV–Vis absorbance spectroscopies were applied in order to investigate wafers chemical composition. It was found the use of two different types of pigments for orange hues. One of them is cinnabar and another one is made up of red lead and massicot mixture. The Prussian blue was used for wafers with dark blue hue and as a mixture with massicot for green hue. According to UV–Vis absorbance spectroscopy it was found the use of anthraquinone type pigment for the red, rose and purple hues. The presence of the wafers with different base materials were determined by means of the Raman spectroscopy, namely of the vegetable (presumably starch) and protein (presumably gelatin) origin. The obtained results were compared with the data available in the previous researches, including the recipes given in the publications of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]