Mr. Gladstone's Washi: A Survey of Reports on the Manufacture of Paper in Japan, "The Parkes Report of 1871 by Schmoller, Hans - 1984

Newtown, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 1984. Quarto. x, 49, 24 pp. + (31)ff. One of 500 copies. Contains three foldout plates, nineteen color reproductions of Japanese watercolors, and 30 illustrated facsimile pages of an eighteenth century Japanese papermaking manual. These woodcut facsimiles are printed on handmade Japanese gampi paper and bound-in. Includes a history of the Western discovery of Japanese paper, and the full texts of two nineteenth century accounts of Japanese papermaking, one of them the "Parkes Report." Sir Harry Parkes, Queen Victoria's Minister to Japan, was the first foreigner to be granted a private audience with the Emperor. Bound in decorated paper boards backed in red morocco, with black morocco lettering-piece. Housed in slipcase, together with an extra set of the watercolor facsimiles in a paper portfolio. Slipcase shows light toning to extemities, spine of book and portfolio slightly sunned, else near fine.