Kit Williams, Wonder-Seeking, and Me
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Secret treasure. Just the two words send a thrill through me. It seems like a somewhat universal condition to get excited by the idea of discovering a secret treasure, whether by accident or by solving a series of clues. Do the words “scavenger hunt” or “riddles” excite you like they do me? Recently I was reminded of the fact that not everyone knows about the king of mysterious puzzles, scavenger hunts, and secret treasure, the artist Kit Williams, who created a mystery that rocked the world in his book Masquerade. I conducted an informal poll among friends and work colleagues to see who was familiar with the book and the artist, and received many blank stares. Which tells me that it’s about time to make sure you all are aware of this remarkable artist and magic maker.
Kit Williams was quietly living in Glouchestershire England, making a small wave in the art scene with his work sold by a gallery in London, when publisher Tom Maschler approached him about creating a children’s book. At first, Williams was entirely disinterested, hating the idea of having to paint the same characters repeatedly for the storybook format, but at the end of their conversation, Maschler said one thing that stuck in Williams’ mind, and he couldn’t dismiss the thought. “It’s a pity that you aren’t interested in doing a picture book, because you could do something that would really shake the world. It would be magnificent.”
The hare from Masquerade
And so he did. The book Masquerade was published in 1979, and soon became an international sensation. Why? Because the book was filled with intricate paintings depicting the story of a hare who loses a jewel that was entrusted to him to deliver from the moon to the sun. And hidden within the intricate paintings and the words along the border of each page were clues that, if solved, would lead the winner to real life buried treasure. The book shook the world, indeed, and also shook up Williams’ quiet life.
Williams, holding the buried treasure from his second book, The Bee on the Comb.
Kit Williams appears, in photographs and videos from the time Masquerade was published, a bit like a character from a fantasy story himself. He had a sort of a Tom Bombadil man of the forest kind of energy to him, and he wasn’t prepared for the barrage of media requests, interviews, and attention. He received thousands of letters from readers giving possible solutions, and since he was the sole keeper of the secret, he had to read every single one. He hadn’t anticipated how many people would send letters simply guessing random locations. “Is it in Big Ben?” “Is it by Stonehenge?”
Image source of the Ampthill monument
The solution to the puzzle, for anyone who solved it, was a sentence: “Catherine’s Long Finger Over Shadows Earth Buried Yellow Amulet Midday Points The Hour In Light Of Equinox Look You.” Although this clue was important, the solver would further have to take the first letter of each word to create “CLOSEBYAMPTHILL” which revealed the location. Ampthill Park in Bedfordshire has a tall cross monument honoring Queen Catherine of Aragon. The longer clue reveals the details: on the vernal or autumnal equinox, the shadow of the “finger” of the monument would fall where the treasure was buried.
What a brilliant and magical book leading to an equally mysterious and magical clue! And I haven’t even started talking about the treasure itself yet. Kit Williams crafted a true treasure: an intricate pendant/hanging of a hare made from 18 carat gold. The pendant featured tiny bells which, when jostled, would make a soft jingling sound like a whisper from Faerieland. It was a masterpiece, truly, and worthy of the person who would solve the puzzle.
The buried masterpiece by Williams.
Unfortunately, that isn’t quite how things played out.
The puzzle was solved in 1982, supposedly, by a person, Ken Thomas, who sent Kit a rough drawing of the location of the treasure. Williams acknowledged Thomas’ success, and helped him unbury the treasure. But. “Ken Thomas,” it turned out, was actually a man named Dugald Thompson, whose business partner, John Guard, was Kit Williams’ ex girlfriend’s now boyfriend. The ex flame had divulged the location to Guard, who then divulged it to Thompson. They quickly found their way to Ampthill and explored the area with metal detectors, but Kit Williams had buried his treasure in a specialized casket designed to foil metal detectors specifically. The duo had then drawn the rough sketch, sent it to Williams, and gained their reward for not having done an ounce of the work. The scandal was only revealed years later in 1988, when an article ran in The Sunday Times.
The casket, created to block metal detectors. On it is written “I am the keeper of the jewel of Masquerade, which lies waiting safe inside me for you or eternity"
To make the situation even more painful, Williams received another letter two days after the treasure was unburied. The letter was from two teachers in Lancashire who had worked out the puzzle legitimately the previous October, but after writing two letters to Williams, they decided not to send them, and to instead wait until the equinox and go to the hill to dig up the treasure themselves. If they had sent either of those letters…the treasure would have gone to the true winners of the contest.
The villain Dugald Thompson started a software company, creating two computer games based on the treasure hunt. Both games were critically panned, and the company went bankrupt. In 1988, Thompson sold the golden hare at auction for £31,900. Kit Williams was there, bidding on his own creation, but withdrew when the price went over £6,000.
Kit Williams retreated from public life after the heartbreak of Masquerade. He ceased all gallery sales of his art, and only sold to local friends and acquaintances in the Glouchestershire area. But in 2009, he decided to put on a new exhibition featuring his work he had created over the last twenty years. He asked friends and collectors to borrow the art he had sold, and prepared for a one-day gallery show.
Williams contacted the BBC and put out a request. He would very much like to see his hare again, wherever it was, and whoever now owned it. The granddaughter of the current owner heard the plea, all the way from Australia where it then resided, and contacted Williams. A documentary crew was on hand to film the moment when he opened the box, examining his own maker’s marks. “I recognize my own work in the same way a mother would recognize her babies. It’s very emotional really. I made it because I was almost no one going nowhere. And then I made this thinking ‘this is something really special,’ and it turned out that way.”
The one-day exhibition was a packed-house success, and Williams’ heretofore unseen work was lauded by critics. He returned to his home in Glouchestershire, continued using local models and living a magical life in the country, and still paints masterpieces to this day.
Although I personally discovered Masquerade as a child, (in the late 80s, long after the treasure was unburied, though in the days of pre-internet I had no idea of that fact and was fascinated by the dream of solving the riddle, which I never did) and wrote a short blog about his work and his home on my Domythic Bliss blog in 2013, I hadn’t actually looked up his artworks in years, and I found myself preparing to write this blog post, taking a deep dive into the rabbit hole of Kit Williams’ art. It is, in a word, exquisite. It’s entirely unique from anything else I’ve ever seen, and breathtakingly beautiful, full of magic and wonder. Since creating Masquerade, and a second book with a second treasure a couple of years later (before the news emerged that the winner of the first book had been a scam), Williams has not only created countless works of art, but a puzzle labyrinth at Bourton-on-the-Water, and several public clocks featuring intricate designs. One features a fish who blows bubbles on the hour every hour, to the delight of small children.
“I’m a total atheist, but if it actually came to it and there had to be a god, I would actually prefer faeries to gods. I would much prefer faeries, because they don’t expect anything of you. A faerie in the old sense, who goes to the country changing things in the landscape. When she passes some extraordinary thing happening, she’s not that phased by it. She just looks at it and thinks ‘that’s life,’ and goes on to the next bit. Which is what I do. That that’s in my mind is not life at all. It’s extraordinary. But to me it’s ordinary, and it’s part of my world.” -Kit Williams
Mystery is such an important part of wonder, and the spirit of Kit Williams’ treasure hunt lives on through other wonder creators, wonder seekers, and, of course, one very singular Miss Wondersmith. I recently contacted Miss Wondersmith, who is known for creating free magical events and inviting strangers through various means such as hiding golden ferns in the forest, or ceramic geodes left in public locations. I wanted to know if she was familiar with Kit Williams, and if she felt his work had influenced hers at all. Her response gave me shivers.
“Hi Grace, thanks so much for thinking of me! I actually had never heard of Kit Williams until recently, and so many people recommended Masquerade that I bought it but I just got it, and haven’t had a chance to dive in yet! What funny timing!”
I believe in moments of synchronicity, and had just recently been talking to my dear friend Bryonie Arnold of The Fernie Brae about how I do feel called to create similar moments of wonder locally in my own area. To have this uncanny coincidence to contact Miss Wondersmith just as she had received Kit Williams’ book seemed like a sign from the universe. Later that same week, I was proofreading the forthcoming autumn issue of Enchanted Living, now at the presses and out soon, and Miss Wondersmith’s article in the issue was all about how much she wishes people would see that we can all be Wondersmiths, we can all create these moments for each other, for strangers, to share hope and magic with each other. Reading that article, basically blessing the idea of me doing public gestures of wonder and magic, was just what I needed at that moment.
Bryonie recently finished holding a series of treasure hunts to celebrate the forthcoming cocooning and metamorphosis of The Fernie Brae space. She hid three keys in a nearby forest park, and shared three treasure maps with clues to the keys’ hidden locations. One map was posted on her social media at a time over the course of a week or so. The keys were immediately found, and a note written on a scroll and tucked into the hollow tube of the key directed the winner to their prize at the Brae.
Inspired by Bryonie, by Miss Wondersmith, and by Kit Williams, I recently contacted a local park about holding a scavenger hunt at their location. I am still, worryingly, waiting to hear back from the park director almost a week later, but I still have hope that my treasure hunt can proceed, and even if it can’t, I am resolved to make a conscious effort to create my own mysterious events and experiences of wonder locally. And I encourage you to do the same.
List of further reading/resources used:
Kit Williams Documentary Video (TW: begins with dead rabbits, some discussion of teen sexual curiosity and “dirty old men”)
