Bonjour Burgundy!

 

In between everything else that’s been happening just now – Ireland tour, South Africa tour, #AnnieSloanLate, not mention the Painters in Residence which I’ve been showcasing on the blog too – I could do with a large red. Well, I’ve got one!

Please say “santé” to my colour, Burgundy. For those who haven’t seen it before, it’s a very rich red – think cranberries and plums – and conjures up classic Victorian interiors and boho boudoirs. But it can also be quite lively: with some help from Old White it morphs into a delicious, raspberry-like pink to add something of an ‘oomph’ to a room.

I’m getting madder

My inspirations include the pigment called Alizarin Crimson,
 a synthetic product made by a man called William Perkin. He was an English dye chemist and he derived it from coal tar. But he was also pipped at the post by one day in filing his patent (which went to two German chemists, Karls Grabe and Lieberman… would you believe?)

The Liebermans were searching for a synthetic way to create the strong red pigment with a bluish tone that comes naturally from the dye derived from Madder plant roots. Madder was found in Tutankhamen’s tomb amongst other places, and is a dye often seen in Asia and hence in Turkish carpets. So Burgundy is ideal for creating that exotic Turkish boudoir feel.

Another source of inspiration for Burgundy is the purplish blue-red that became available in the 1860. The English called it 'magenta', after the Battle of Magenta in 1859, a narrow French victory over Austria in the struggle for Italian independence – which is a fascinating fact in itself.

I was drawn to the name and colour because of its classical French Napoleonic connections and I love Burgundy as representing that refined French claret-colour which I suggest you could put on, say, a fabulous chest of drawers, maybe on its own, or with a little clear wax or even some dark wax. It adds a glorious gravitas and also looks great with gold leaf. As a regal colour Burgundy also pairs extremely well with Château Grey.

Bubblegum pink

As a bluey- not orangey-red, you might not associate Burgundy as a ‘fun’ colour, but wait till you try adding Old White to it: then it becomes right up-to-date bright bubblegum pink. Already a lot of people are adding white to it and making  these extraordinarily vivacious pinks, just like Lady Penelope and Thunderbirds.

A tripartite colour combination of Burgundy, Provence and Arles (all complementary on the colour wheel) makes an amazing mix for a room. For example you might like to try an Arles-painted wall combined with a Burgundy piece, say a chest of drawers, with some added Provence in the room in some other way, perhaps inside the drawers?

Yours, Annie

Bookmark (2) – Traditional Paints and Finishes

  

… After completing the groundbreaking (and back-breaking) 'Complete Book of Decorative Paint Techniques' [Bookmarks (1) February 2014],  my publishers in the early 1990s were after the next bestseller, so with Kate Gwynn again designing, I wrote 'Traditional Paints and Finishes' (US title 'Classic Paints and Faux Finishes'.) 

This was a the history and sourcebook of all the different sorts of artisan paints, pigments and colours – a lot about making paint, and less on techniques. Check out the back cover contents below which features shots from my step-by-step stencilling and distressing a cabinet!

Plastered

If I was to pick out a feature I was particular pleased with, it would be the plaster finishes – and I did lots of them. 

Creating the props and effects for this book was a huge task, literally. This was in the days before Photoshop so we made these huge boxes with plaster in them and then I painted them and we shot them. The pic below also show my early infatuation with sgraffito which I’ve also recently blogged about.

There were no computer geeks and graphic designers doing fancy stuff on Macs! You had to make these things. And they were so beautiful, even if they weighed a ton! And the greater shame was that after the photo shoot, we had to throw them away. Anyway, looking back at my first big breaks in publishing I am very, very proud of these early gems.

Absorbed by paint

Researching the history of decorative paints –including limewashing, découpage, fresco and the use of glue size, and old varnishes and waxes, as well as how to make paints from natural pigments – spurred me on to develop my own paints as I became more and more absorbed by what paint is and how it works (and there’s a post to come on that…). It wasn’t about nostalgia, it was "a reaction to the blandness and uniformity of modern paints.”

I was reacting against the standardisation that plastic paints produced. Oil was traditionally the classic paint everybody used, so we did both books using oils – back then I thought it was the only way I could get that translucency. I had by then started to try out my own paints (e.g. early versions of Chalk Paint® in Chateau Grey and Aubusson Blue) and some of these featured in both books.

I suppose, in a modest way, with these two titles I helped kick start the rediscovery of traditional paints and paint effects. The use of many softer and subtler colours allowed novice and more experienced decorators a chance to reclaim the look of earlier times. Some of it will look dated now as fashion in decoration comes and goes (and I have developed more deeper, warmer colours), but the principles and fundamentals hold good. And of course today I have my fabulously versatile Chalk Paint® range so you don’t have to make your own paints from scratch as I had to all those years ago.

You could say that you get my whole history in paint mixing and colour theory in each Chalk Paint® pot!

Yours, Annie

Arles 

is one of my colours 

This is how to say the French say it  http://www.forvo.com/word/arles/#fr Quite difficult for our English tongues! 

I named it after a town in the south of France

in the area called the Luberon , famous for the vast deposits of yellow ochre pigments in the hills. 

All the houses are painted in various ochre pigments from bright yellows, earthy yellows, oranges to earth red. 

Famously it's where Van Gogh lived and painted becoming obsessed with yellow. His paintings have heightened concentrated colour 

Arles

 Château Grey

 

Old Ochre

To use Arles,  which is hot and intense, in our homes you need to use cooling quiet colours such as those above or Country Grey or a lightened version of Paris Grey 

Using any blue with it will only make Arles more yellow as blue is the complementary colour - great in a painting but not on a piece of furniture