That summer, construction began on Hunter's papermill, located on the site of an earlier grist mill on Jew's Creek, just across the Huckleberry Turnpike from Wolfert's Roost. Wishing to forego all modern conveniences in the making of his paper, Hunter planned to use a waterwheel to provide the power to run the beater. The architectural style of the quaint mill was based on the half-timbered, thatched buildings Hunter had seen during a walk in the English countryside the previous summer. The mill was a very modest building, about fourteen by sixteen feet, which fit unobtrusively on the site; indeed, rather than cut down obstructive trees, Hunter incorporated one into the porch. The foundation and fireplace were made with fieldstone and the building with "oak beams from the former grist mill that had been stored in the barns and the hand-moulded bricks left over when the second storey of the house was built� The roof�was thatched with rye straw grown for the purpose in a five-acre meadow above the old house."2 Hunter had the stone dam heightened to raise the level of the pond so that water could be diverted via a flume to the wheel. He hired a local wheelwright to make the overshot wheel of cypress and pine. He purchased the gearing mechanism, shafts, and bearing boxes. The mill and waterwheel were nearly complete by the time winter set in at the end of 1912. But even though the mill was unfinished and he had no beater, Hunter could not wait to make paper. In October 1912, he ordered pulp beaten from linen rag cuttings from the T. J. Marshall company, the English hand mould and dandy roll manufacturers where he had first made paper, who in turn purchased the pulp from the Joseph Batchelor mill in Little Chart, Kent. In November, sixteen pounds of rag pulp were shipped. (Although the length of time it would have taken for the pulp to cross the ocean can only be surmised, the linen rag pulp must have been quite smelly by the time it arrived at the mill.) By that time, Hunter had also purchased a pair of small�6� x 8� inch�papermaking moulds from Marshall. Working somewhere in the house, which he now referred to as Mill House, he formed a sheet or two of paper with the well-rinsed pulp on the new moulds. In the Hunter archives, there is a partial sheet of wove paper with no watermark with the pencil notation: "First sheet of paper made by Dard Hunter at his mill in America. From pulp brought from the Batchelor Mill in Kent. 1912." During the long winter, Hunter also had time to set his priorities for the coming year. Because no one in America was making paper by hand on a commercial basis, artists and printers had to buy expensive, imported papers. Hunter was sure that a market existed for American-made paper, and he decided to cater to it, but while this business would give him an income and a reputation, its main purpose was to give him the experience and expertise he so keenly wanted. While he could purchase semi-processed pulp from a variety of mills in America, paper requiring any degree of fineness needed further beating. After writing to many firms, Hunter finally ordered a small beater from the Mills Machine Company in April 1913. By the middle of that year, he had either purchased or had made the following pieces of equipment: an oak and iron screw press; a copper-lined, cypress vat; a rag cutter and duster; and a boiler for processing linen and cotton rags. (He inquired about a plater, which imparts a smooth surface to paper, but no evidence has been found that one was purchased.) Hunter also purchased soda ash (sodium carbonate) to soften and remove any sizing from the linen and cotton rags, bleach to lighten them, animal glue for sizing, gum for sealing envelopes, and papermaking felts. In Before Life Began, he recalled the long hours in the mill: After a summer rain storm I would take advantage of the abundant water, rising in William Falls a mile or more distant, flowing down the brook through the pasture lands of our neighbours, each little spring and tributary adding its trickle to the stream, and at last over my wooden water-wheel turning the small beater and macerating the rags for paper. When there was a goodly fall of water, the capacity of the mill was about one hundred and fifty sheets of paper a day�When the stock was finally ready, after days and days of beating, I formed the individual sheets of paper in the moulds. I couched each moist sheet upon the woolen felting and lastly pressed the "post" of waterleaf paper in the huge wood and iron press I had myself built. This press was actuated by a heavy iron bar reaching half way across the mill�After considerable water had been pressed from the paper and the felts removed, I would again press the sheets placed in a pile, one upon the other, and finally hang the paper to dry in the attic of the house across the road.3 While these experiments were taking place, Hunter played with names for his mill. An early design for a letterhead included a post of paper in a screw press with the words, "PAPER MADE BY HAND AT THE HUNNY SUCKLE MILL." Fortunately, he decided on the simple and direct Dard Hunter Mill. To make a watermark for his letterhead paper, he cut the individual letters for "DARD HUNTER MILL 1913" together with the screw press in a circle from sheet brass. Each piece was soldered to the laid mould of a second pair received from the Marshall company in early 1913. Even though an altered version of this watermark was used into 1914 and early 1915, the date was not changed as Hunter wanted to mark 1913 as the year the mill started operations. By this time, he had also made enough of his hand-crafted type to print the letterhead. (As he did not have a printing press until 1915, he probably set the type and sent it with his paper to the Roycroft Press.) Hunter first made sheets of paper for stationery, note cards, and envelopes on the small moulds. Later, he made papers for printmakers who worked primarily in intaglio and relief techniques. In addition to plain sheets, Hunter also made decorative endpapers using aniline dyes to color the pulp green, gray, blue, brown, or rose. First, he formed a sheet in a base color, then onto the still wet sheet he carefully swirled pulp of a different color, as if marbling the sheet. He also appears to have made several partial dips in different colored pulps to create patterns. These sheets may mark the first attempts by anyone to make decorated paper from colored pulp. Throughout 1914, Hunter received occasional orders for paper, but he could fill only the small ones because his wooden press did not function properly. In early 1915, he strengthened it, and the situation improved somewhat. However, his business was not a success. Although people were interested in unique, handmade paper with custom watermarks, only a few were willing to pay for the luxury. Experiments in Light-and-Shade Watermarking In early 1913, Hunter began experimenting with both simple wire watermarks and the more complex, light-and-shade, or chiaroscuro, watermarks. The latter type differs considerably from the former because it produces tonal images ranging from dark to light. Invented in the mid-nineteenth century by Englishman William H. Smith, the technique involves a number of steps, the first of which is to carve the image, right-reading, into a sheet of wax on a light box, using gravers, needles, gouges, etc. As the wax is sculpted, the image appears through the changing thicknesses of wax. The finished wax model is then coated with a thin layer of powdered graphite and electrotyped to produce a metal die. An annealed (softened and less brittle) woven wire cloth is then pressed into the die, and the three-dimensional image is formed. The cloth is then hardened and sewn onto the mould. The areas of the watermark above the plane of the wire screen will appear light in the paper, while the areas below it will appear dark, with gradations of grey in between. However, the success of the light-and-shade watermark depends primarily on the preparation of the fiber. The secret is to cut the fibers very short, like wet flour, so as to conform to the different levels of the mould cover. If the fibers are too long, they tend to tangle and drape over the edges, creating fuzzy, undefined images. The only problem with such watermarked papers is that they tend to be relatively weak if not heavily sized. Hunter's earliest foray into light-and-shade watermarking began in February 1913 when he sent a 1905 photograph of himself in profile to the English mould-making firm, W. Green, Son & Waite with an order for one 8 x 11� inch hand mould. By the end of May, their artist finished making the wax model, a die was cast, and a wax cast from it was sent to Hunter for approval. Satisfied, he sent the design for the countermark DARD HUNTER to be made in wire. When completed, the mould and three sample sheets, formed from differing proportions of pulp to water, were sent to him. After experimenting with this mould, Hunter determined that his beater simply could not cut the fibers short enough. In early December 1914, he wrote to Perrigot-Masure, French paper manufacturers of Arches and Rives, inquiring about the cost of making paper from this mould. They quoted between six and eight dollars for a ream, depending on the quantity ordered. Although Hunter made calculations on the bottom of their letter, there is no indication that he placed an order then. In 1922, however, he ordered seven reams of paper made on his mould. When used as stationery, the sheet was folded in half backwards so that, in transmitted light, the portrait "looks" to the right, and the name is correctly oriented on top of it. The first light-and-shade watermark Hunter executed himself depicted his mill with the countermark DARD HUNTER MILL in wire. Work on it commenced in the fall of 1913. Although he attempted to make the dies himself, he did write to several firms inquiring if they could make them from his waxes. The F.A. Ringler company may have made the dies for the mill watermark. Once he received the dies, Hunter prepared the wire cloth and attached it to the mould. He formed a few sheets with this mould, but again he had trouble making a clear image. Intending to resolve these problems later, he laid the mould aside. In 1921, he may have experimented again with this mould, but he soon decided that it would serve a better purpose as part of the papermaking exhibit he made for the Smithsonian Institution that year. In 1914, Hunter began work designing his second and most elaborate watermark, the Papermaking Commemorative. For the center, oval image, he carved two wax models: one intaglio and one cameo. The image depicts a vatman dressed in colonial costume standing at the vat forming a sheet of paper. In the background is a large wooden press with the inscription "1690," denoting the year the first American papermill began operations. The rest of the design, painstakingly done in wire, gives homage to John Tate, the first English papermaker, and the first printer to use Tate's paper, Wynken De Worde; on the right, America's first papermaker, William Rittenhouse, and the first printer to use his paper, William Bradford. In between these pioneers is Hunter, identified by "DH" in a scroll at the top of an architectural shrine, an enclosure strikingly similar to the cover design of Frederic Goudy's journal, Typographica. As with the DARD HUNTER MILL watermark, Hunter set this project aside before finishing the cover. In the fall of 1917, it seems that he decided to finish the mould because that September, the Ringler company made dies from an unspecified wax model. However, as Hunter had ceased making paper in the mill by 1917, he had to wait until 1921 before making paper on this mould. That year, for an issue of Paper, he wrote "Watermarking Hand-Made Paper." The Papermaking Commemorative mould was used as an illustration, and the caption read: "The oval is made in a different color from the margin of the sheet by stenciling out each in turn; the two portions of the sheet are united while still in the wet pulp state."4 There are a few extant sheets of paper made by Hunter for which he employed this technique. The center oval is light blue while the remainder of the sheet is off-white. While Hunter experimented with stencils, he also used a fragment of a mould to which a second oval light-and-shade watermark was attached. Rather than ruin one of his own moulds, Hunter probably sacrificed one of the wove moulds he purchased in England in 1920. Using a makeshift deckle for the fragment, Hunter had to carefully pour blue pulp onto the surface. He then experimented both by couching it directly onto a full sheet and by couching it into a void created when the oval on the whole mould was masked out. Most of these watermarking experiments were probably done between November 1920 and the early months of 1921. By mid-1915, watermarking experiments and papermaking for clients were curtailed when he began work to create the world's first one-man book, The Etching of Figures, by William A. Bradley, published by the Chicago Society of Etchers. Hunter not only made the paper for this book on a new 16� x 23� inch antique laid mould, but he also cut and hand-cast an entire font of type, and printed it on a Washington hand press. The next year, he produced a second book for the Society, The Etching of Contemporary Life, by Frank Weitenkampf. By the beginning of 1917, however, he decided to abandon any further papermaking at Marlborough because there was simply too little water in the creek to run the beater efficiently. (His last project for the Society, the so-called J.C. Vondrous Folio, was printed in late 1917 on paper left over from the previous books.) Although concerted efforts were made, Hunter had no luck locating suitable property for a new mill. He sold Mill House in 1918, and eventually returned to Chillicothe in 1919 when he purchased Mountain House. Over the next few years, Hunter investigated several paper mill propositions, and finally, in 1928, he purchased an old iron foundry complex in Lime Rock, Connecticut. Two years later, this mill began making paper, but that is another story. Notes 1. Natalie Curtis, "An Historic House on the Hudson: The Silent Witness of the Growth of American Freedom," The Craftsman 17:1 (October 1909): 11. 2. Dard Hunter, Before Life Began (Cleveland, Ohio: The Rowfant Club, 1941), 102. 3. Ibid., 103-05. 4. Dard Hunter, "Watermarking Hand-Made Paper," Paper 18:17 (June 29, 1921): 12-13, 30.
