The Masquerade hare has sold at auction.
I'm still thinking about it being buried! The jeweled gold hare buried back in the the late Seventies by Kit Williams and Bamber Gascoine.
I so remember Masquerade, the mystery art book by artist Kit Williams. It was like folk horror with a prize
I was 18 in 1979 and it was an essential bit of late Seventies teen geek culture, like say Roger Dean's book Visions was. Grown adults were enthralled too.
Williams's Masquerade's art was mesmerizing, very eerie and the clues in them were certainly not something I could work out the answer to.
People did though and the hare was found in in Bedfordshire in 1983, although with a whiff of nepotism, the find was marred by scandal. Williams hid away for a long while. I was disappointed it was ever found.
Do you remember Masquerade?
You can read about the Hare auction here:
With the success of Masquerade other publishers jumped on the bandwagon with well illustrated 'search' stories of their own. I bought one about an Austin 7 car for the nice illustrations as a 'remainder' copy and the time limit for solving the puzzle had ended.
ReplyDeleteI phoned the publisher to ask what the solution had been and the reply was they didn't know and didn't care.
This was a month or two after the 'winner' was known and I took it as being what happens when publishers hire new staff for their 'BA Literature' qualifications. They have no interest in a publishers reputation. After that I avoided books from that publisher, the name of which I have now forgotten.