A cinder-block wall painted pale turquoise in full sun, with a white glazed door, a small metal table and two chairs standing on a concrete slab.

Pigment and paint · milled in small runs

Harrow & Pike

Forty litres at a time, in a yard behind the old feed store. Every colour is named for the place its pigment came from, and none of it ships until it has been laid beside that place in daylight and the two agree.

Wheal Verdi · #65C2D5 · lettered in Sarum Green

01 — The pairs

We sell colour two at a time.

A colour on its own is a guess. A colour with something to sit against is a decision. These three pairs are what we keep in stock all year, and each chip is lettered in its partner — the quickest way to see whether two colours can hold a room together.

Pair 01 Marle Pit Ochre / Cranwich Bog contrast 5.6:1

Five mustard-yellow glazed earthenware vessels, two of them shaped like birds, standing on a polished wooden table in front of a painted marsh landscape.

Marle Pit Ochre

#EBB756

Yellow ochre washed out of the clay marl. Warm, opaque, slightly greenish in the shade.

harrow & pike
A long rosewood slab bench on two plank legs, photographed on weathered grey concrete, with stacked chairs and yellow-green planters behind it.

Cranwich Bog

#5A3828

Brown earth from drained fen peat, roasted twice. Reads black in a north room and red at four o'clock.

harrow & pike

Pair 02 Wheal Verdi / Sarum Green contrast 4.7:1

A cinder-block wall painted pale turquoise in full sun, with a white glazed door, a small metal table and two chairs standing on a concrete slab.

Wheal Verdi

#65C2D5

Copper carbonate off the old mine spoil, ground fine. The only colour here that gets louder in direct sun.

harrow & pike
A billiard table with dark green felt in a dim bar, lit from tall curtained windows, with illuminated beer signs above it.

Sarum Green

#0D4D47

Green earth off the chalk escarpment. Weak on its own, which is the point — it holds a wall without arguing.

harrow & pike

Pair 03 Chalkwell Buff / Furnace Row Red contrast 5.0:1

A pendant lamp made of overlapping copper petals, lit from inside so the undersides glow pale and warm.

Chalkwell Buff

#FCD5AA

Burnt lime and a pinch of the ochre. The ceiling colour we sell most of, and the one people call to reorder.

harrow & pike
A teak sideboard with a glass-fronted hutch against a white wall, a red moulded plywood chair beside it and a patterned rug on the floor.

Furnace Row Red

#AA2826

Red iron oxide, calcined in the same shed the terrace was named after. One coat covers; two is showing off.

harrow & pike

02 — Proof

The photograph is the spec.

Every colour we sell exists somewhere before it exists in a tin. Below each photograph is the hex we read off it and the part of the frame we read it from. When a batch drifts away from its photograph we mill it again rather than rewrite the number.

Five mustard-yellow glazed earthenware vessels, two of them shaped like birds, standing on a polished wooden table in front of a painted marsh landscape.
Marle Pit Ochre #EBB756

Read off the glaze on the tall vessel, left of centre — the lit side, not the rim.

A long rosewood slab bench on two plank legs, photographed on weathered grey concrete, with stacked chairs and yellow-green planters behind it.
Cranwich Bog #5A3828

Read off the dark grain at the near edge of the slab, halfway along.

A cinder-block wall painted pale turquoise in full sun, with a white glazed door, a small metal table and two chairs standing on a concrete slab.
Wheal Verdi #65C2D5

Read off the sunlit blocks above the table, upper right of the frame.

A billiard table with dark green felt in a dim bar, lit from tall curtained windows, with illuminated beer signs above it.
Sarum Green #0D4D47

Read off the felt in the bottom-left corner of the table, out of the window light.

A pendant lamp made of overlapping copper petals, lit from inside so the undersides glow pale and warm.
Chalkwell Buff #FCD5AA

Read off the lit undersides of the middle row of petals.

A teak sideboard with a glass-fronted hutch against a white wall, a red moulded plywood chair beside it and a patterned rug on the floor.
Furnace Row Red #AA2826

Read off the seat shell of the chair, away from the highlight on the lip.

03 — Specification

Numbers, for the people who need them.

CMYK here is a conversion, not a press proof. Ask us for a drawdown before you commit anything to print, and we will post one the same week.

Marle Pit Ochre

CMYK0, 22, 63, 8

RGB235, 183, 86

HEX#EBB756

Cranwich Bog

CMYK0, 38, 56, 65

RGB90, 56, 40

HEX#5A3828

Wheal Verdi

CMYK53, 9, 0, 16

RGB101, 194, 213

HEX#65C2D5

Sarum Green

CMYK83, 0, 8, 70

RGB13, 77, 71

HEX#0D4D47

Chalkwell Buff

CMYK0, 15, 33, 1

RGB252, 213, 170

HEX#FCD5AA

Furnace Row Red

CMYK0, 76, 78, 33

RGB170, 40, 38

HEX#AA2826

04 — Process

Five things happen to it.

Nothing here is quick and none of it is clever. It is the same order of operations a paint house would have used in 1890, with better lighting.

01

Source

Pigment arrives as rock, clay or mill scale, in paper sacks, from six places we have been buying from for a long time. We will tell you which pit if you ask, and we will not tell you the price we pay for it.

02

Wash and levigate

Ground in water and settled three times over four days. The fines make the paint; the grit goes on the path outside the door, which is now a rather good colour itself.

03

Mull

Three passes on a granite slab with a glass muller until a drawdown shows no specks under a ten-times loupe. This is the part that takes the day.

04

Match against the photograph

The wet batch is laid beside the photograph the colour was named from, in north light, around ten in the morning. If they argue, it goes back to the slab. We have never once adjusted the photograph.

05

Fill and label

Forty litres fills eighty half-litre tins. Each one gets the batch number, the date it was mulled, and the name of the place it came out of.