Douglass Morse Howell was born in 1906 in New York City. Traveling throughout Europe with his mother Mary Howell, a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, he attended the University of Turin before returning to the United States in the 1930s as a banker and literary agent. After serving for five years in World War II, Howell learned to make handmade paper in France. Bringing this skill back to New York, Howell developed and built his pulp beaters, the machines used in his own papermaking practice as well as when making paper for other artists. Howell made paper in a wide variety of ranges, colors, and textures, using materials from hemp to linen to blue jeans. He made paper for such prominent artists as: Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Dorothy Dehner. He was also the primary papermaker for Tatiana Grossman of Universal Limited Art Editions. Howell became an American Craft Council Gold Medalist in 1993 and died in 1994.