screening and received its
name because it was woven on a loom in about the same manner as
cloth. It left in the paper an indistinct impression resembling a
fabric. Baskerville had been in the japanning and metal-working
trades before becoming a printer, so that he was naturally familiar
with this material, metal screening having been used in England for
other purposes before it was put to use as a material upon which to
mould sheets of paper.

The first book printed in Europe on wove paper unquestionably was the
Latin edition of Virgil produced by Baskerville in 1757. This was,
however, partly on laid also. The actual paper was made in James
Whatman's mill in Maidstone, Kent, on the banks of the river Len, where
paper had been made since the 17th century. Whatman, who became sole
owner of the mill in 1740, specialized in fine white paper of the
highest quality. But while the book attracted considerable attention it
did not immediately divert the demand for laid paper, since it was
looked on more as an oddity than as a serious achievement. Baskerville
was strictly an artist: he took unlimited time and pains, he had no
regard for the prevailing market, and he produced sporadically; also, he
was harshly criticized and even derided for his strange formats.[18]
With such a reputation for impracticality the printer's influence was
negligible during his lifetime although, of course, it was widely felt
later.

[14] Jackson, _op. cit._ (footnote 12), p. 29.

[15] Dard Hunter, _Papermaking through eighteen centuries_, New York,
1930, pp. 148, 152.

[16] A. T. Hazen, "Baskerville and James Whatman," _Studies in
Bibliography, Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia_,
vol. 5, 1952-53. For a brilliant study of the Whatman mill, where
practically all wove paper up to the 1780's was manufactured, see Thomas
Balston's _James Whatman, father and son_, London, 1957.

[17] Hunter, _op. cit._ (footnote 15), p. 215.

[18] R. Straus and R. K. Dent, _John Baskerville_, Cambridge, 1907. On
page 19 the authors include a letter to Baskerville from Benjamin
Franklin, written in 1760 in a jocular tone, which notes that he
overheard a friend saying that Baskerville's types would be "the means
of blinding all the Readers in the Nation owing to the thin and narrow
strokes of the letters."

About 1777 the French became acquainted with wove paper, which Franklin
brought to Paris for exhibition.