Mr Gladstone's Washi.

First edition, limited to 500 copies printed on mouldmade Hahnemühle paper in Van Dijck types, of which this is number 352. A most attractive production, incorporating a facsimile of Sir Harry Parkes's original report and handsome reproductions of various artefacts that he collected in the course of his inquiry. "At the request of the Foreign Secretary in 1869, Sir Harry Smith Parkes, the Minister for Japan, and the three British consuls in Yokohama, Osaka and Nagasaki, collected examples of handmade Japanese paper and paper artefacts. The samples, together with information about their method of manufacture, their cost and usage, were sent back to England. Most of the Collection is housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum; the remainder is at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Collection contains 412 sample types (that is, approximately 2,500 sheets) of handmade paper and paper artefacts, such as umbrellas, coats, hair ornaments and hats, manufactured at the end of the Edo period and the early Meiji period, from as many as 21 provinces. It was collected at the height of the papermaking industry in Japan. Parkes' Reports represent the only comprehensive survey of paper at that time. The Collection not only contains samples of paper artefacts unobtainable today, but also some samples of which few, and in some cases, no other examples survive" (Webber and Thompson, "An Introduction to the Parkes Collection of Japanese Papers", The Paper Conservator, volume 15, 1991, issue 1).