Wednesday 14 September 2011

Winsor and Newton artists watercolour tubes, a testament to longevity.


Last Sunday I bought some tubes Winsor and Newton artist quality watercolour tubes that dated from before 1971, as they were all over forty years old – I could tell this because they had prices pencilled on them in old and new money – so they had been sold then, I didn’t expect them to much practical use.

One had split and had gone completely hard, several of the rest had a small plug that had gone hard just behind the cap, which I had to pick out, but to my astonishment they all contain usable and very high quality watercolour paint. 

I don’t usually aspire to artist’s quality paint, so this is a gift from the gods as it were. There were also about seven Rowney tubes from the same period only two of these hadn’t gone hard

4 comments:

  1. Ah, they don't make 'em like they used to, that's what I always say.

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  2. Will they contain lead? Lead has been banned in household paint since 1978 but I am not sure about artidt paints.

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  3. John I don’t have many recent artist quality watercolours and with the only three that are the same colours as ones in the tubes I bought, I can’t find any difference in quality between the new ones and the old ones.

    8.47 there are and always have been poisonous watercolour paints, you can buy non toxic watercolour and I would recommend this for young children.

    I haven’t heard of watercolours that contain lead and I think the most poisonous ingredients would be cadmium and cobalt, artists quality oil paints do contain lead, the main one used for a base coat “Flake White” in particular, I haven’t used oil paint for about forty years, so I don’t know if this applies now.

    My understanding is that you can only get poisoned by artist quality paint if you eat it, the odd bit I have tasted by accident doesn’t taste very nice.

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  4. Where in the world were you able to purchase 1971 watercolours from?????

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