William Balston: Paper Maker, 1759-1849
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1954. Hardcover. Rust-colored cloth, gilt letters on spine, tan paper dust jacket, 172 pp., 15 BW illus. G+ (DJ is heavily aged or tanned; book and pages are otherwise nice and clean.). Item #153647
"For twenty years William Balston was the apprentice and right-hand man of the great paper-maker James Whatman (1741-98). In 1806, after Whatman's death, he founded Springfield Mill, the largest paper factory in Great Britain, and probably the first to be operated solely by steam power, with the determination to make the finest and most durable white papers in the world. It was however only after long and desperate struggles, through the last nine years of the Napoleonic Wars and their even more chaotic aftermath, that he achieved success, and his writing and drawing papers, with the J W H A T M A N watermark, became famous throughout Europe and America. These early struggles are the main theme of this book, but Chapter I contains much hitherto unpublished information about the great Whatman, and the later chapters incidentally throw light on the social life of a self-made provincial manufacturer in the first half of the nineteenth century." (dj) The book is printed on "mould-made J W H A T M A N paper manufactured by W. & R. Balston," with ragged edges.
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