Vintage Paint Tube Hardcover Journal — Artistic Sketchbook & Notebook

The great Parisian colorman Lefranc & Cie supplied paint to French studios for the better part of two centuries. Their tubes, with their silver-grey metal bodies, color-coded label bands, and the precise commercial typography identifying each pigment, became fixtures of the working atelier: objects so familiar they stopped being noticed and became simply part of what a studio looked like. <em>Vert Émeraude. Jaune de Chrome. Sienne. Bleu de Prusse. Vermillon Orange. Blanc d’Argent.</em> The vocabulary of French painting, rendered as a catalogue illustration on a warm cream ground.

This journal carries that image on a matte laminated hardcover: six Lefranc &amp; Cie tube illustrations in faithful reproduction, reproduced from period catalogue material with the tonal gradation, original labels, and restrained typography of their source intact. Inside, 150 lined pages on 75 perforated sheets, bound in a casewrap sewn construction that opens flat and stays there. It is a journal that looks like the inside of a painter’s drawer and functions like the inside of a painter’s head.