Oak Knoll

There are 50 sheets of paper, each 12 x 8 inches, in the box with a single typed letter on John Mason's letterhead. A fine copy. They were made by John Mason at the 'mill' in the basement of his home on Ratcliffe Road, Leicester. The papers were made on various moulds; many are watermarked 'College of Art, Leicester', where he taught for two decades, or with his own name. Others lack watermarks in favour of very strong textures.

The methods John Mason used to make these papers are clearly and wittily outlined in his book Paper Making as an Artistic Craft, published in 1963 and written with such enthusiasm for the craft that it is hard to resist setting up a mill of one's own. John Mason stopped making paper in 1978, of which these sheets are among the last that he ever made.

John Mason was born into a book-making family: his father J.H. Mason, having been compositor to the Doves Press, Cobden-Sanderson and others; he himself having gone to work at Gregynog as a binder in the 1920s. He is best known, however, for the original papers he made while at Leicester College of Art and the effect those papers had in making Leicester a center for private presses in Britain.