La Maison du Pastel
From Business Insider’s series Still Standing, a look at La Maison du Pastel, a 300-year-old French company that makes pastels for artists by hand. Back in its golden age, the company supplied the likes of Monet & Degas but fell into neglect near the end of the 20th century. The newest generation of ownership has restored the company and they now offer over 1,900 different pastel colors.
Seriously, take a look at their online shop…there’s all sorts of amazing stuff in there. Like this antique watercolors set — get a load of these color names: Violet Lake, Burnt Lake, Carmine, Venice Red, Vermilion, Orange Chrome, Gamboge, Zinc White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Umber, Van Dyck Brown, Lamp Black, Payne’s Gray, Indigo, Celestial Blue, Blue Ash, Prussian. You can even order a full set of their pastels for only €29,450.00 (the set comes with a custom-made chest of drawers).
I am not at all an artist but these colors all look so amazing that I’m eyeing one of the smaller sets for myself… (thx, caroline)
Discussion 6 comments
Spectacular. I think of the Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums, which also is a feast of wild names and materials, as well as offering a vast spectrum of colors. Here's a good overview; you can browse the pigments via this search.
Oh! Also, their shopping cart is the best ever: you can choose a bunch of colors in open stock and then click "view colour palette" to see color smudges that you can drag around and rearrange!
Finally, one of the strangest (and certainly the most troubling) pigments in the Forbes collection (Harvard gets in trouble for this kind of thing all the time).
Whoa: "from remains of Egyptian mummies embalmed with asphaltum"
Also, that's the most unique online shopping cart interface I've seen in forever.
This is the dream job I never knew I wanted. The entire process feels so soothing, like being in a constant flow state.
The NY Times profiled the company in 2022.
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