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Bringing an Antique Watercolor Kit Back to Life
My dad gave me a bunch of his old art stuff. One item was this antique Winsor and Newton watercolor box, probably from the 1960s. I’ve been getting into watercolor painting recently, and thought it would be interesting to bring this kit back to life. Not restore it—that would be beyond my skills, and would result in an artifact too perfect to use—just get it back into operating condition, with close matches for the original colors.
And that turned out to be a challenge.
How It Started
This is how the kit looked when I opened it. Two of the paint pans were empty, one was missing, and all the colors were in the wrong places. The whole kit was a dirty mess.
The first order of business was to find a replacement pan to complete the set. These days, watercolor pans are standard sizes: a full pan is 19mm x 30mm, while a half pan is 19mm x 16mm, roughly half that size. Most watercolor kits produced today use one or both of these sizes. The pans in the old kit were 3/4" square, an older non-standard size.
There are many places to order standard modern pans, but it was clear that it would be extremely difficult to find a replacement pan in this odd size. Winsor & Newton doesn’t sell replacement parts for these old kits, as one might expect.
After a long search, I had a breakthrough: I found someone selling a few antique paints in their original pans. The pans looked square, like the ones in this old kit! I threw caution to the wind and ordered one, hoping it was the right size.
Meanwhile, I decided to clean up the kit a bit and arrange the colors in the right order to match the label pasted to the floor of the brush compartment.
There were several tints unfamiliar to me: Gamboge, Green Bice, and Chrome Pale. I searched online to find out more. Gamboge is still produced, but both Green Bice and Chrome Pale are no longer available from…
