Book
Challenged by Tom Maschler, of the British publishing firm Jonathan Cape, to "do something no one has ever done before" with a children's book, Williams set out in the 1970s to create a book of paintings that readers would study carefully rather than flip through and discard. The book's objective, the hunt for a valuable treasure, became his means to this end. Masquerade featured 15 detailed paintings illustrating the story of a hare (named Jack Hare), who seeks to carry a treasure from the Moon (depicted as a woman) to her love object, the Sun (a man). On arriving at the sun, Jack finds he has lost the treasure, and the reader is left to find its location.
Along with creating the book, Williams crafted a hare from 18 carat (75%) gold and jewels, in the form of a large filigree pendant on a segmented chain. He sealed the hare inside a ceramic hare-shaped casket (both to protect the prize from the soil, and foil any attempts to locate the treasure with a metal detector). The casket was inscribed with the legend "I am the Keeper of the Jewel of MASQUERADE, which lies waiting safe inside me for You or Eternity".
On August 7, 1979, Williams (accompanied by celebrity witness Bamber Gascoigne) buried the casket at a secret location within England. Williams announced that his forthcoming book contained all clues necessary to decode the treasure's precise location "within a few inches." At the time, the only additional clue he provided was that it was buried on public property that could be easily accessed.
To ensure that readers from further afield had an equal chance of winning, Williams also announced that he would confirm the first precisely correct answer sent to him by post.
Kit Williams said:
- "If I was to spend two years on the 16 paintings for Masquerade I wanted them to mean something. I recalled how, as a child, I had come across 'treasure hunts' in which the puzzles were not exciting nor the treasure worth finding. So I decided to make a real treasure, of gold, bury it in the ground and paint real puzzles to lead people to it. The key was to be Catherine of Aragon's Cross at Ampthill, near Bedford, casting a shadow like the pointer of a sundial."
A modified version of the book also appeared in Italian, with a treasure buried in Italy (cf. Gascoigne, ch. 10). It was reinvented and translated by Joan Arnold and Lilli Denon with the name Il tesoro di Masquerade (Emme Edizioni).
Read more about this topic: Masquerade (book)
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