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. 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. On August 7, 1979, Williams (accompanied by celebrity witness Bamber Gascoigne) buried the casket at a secret location within England. 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”. 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). BookĪlong 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.
On arriving at the sun, Jack finds he has lost the treasure, and the reader is left to find its location. Masquerade featured 15 detailed paintings illustrating the story of Jack Hare, who seeks to carry a treasure from the Moon (depicted as a woman) to her love object, the Sun (a man). The book’s objective, the hunt for a valuable treasure, became his means to this end.
It became the inspiration for a genre of books known today as armchair treasure hunts.Ĭhallenged 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. Masquerade is a children’s book, written and illustrated by Kit Williams, which sparked a treasure hunt by concealing clues to the location of a jewelled golden hare, created and hidden somewhere in Britain by Williams. I think this is one of my favourite things EVER:
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