Vintage Paint Tube Hardcover Journal

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. Vert Emeraude. Jaune de Chrome. Sienne. Bleu de Prusse. Vermillon Orange. Blanc d'Argent. 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 & 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.

Specifications

• Cover: Matte laminated hardcover, casewrap sewn binding
• Pages: 150 lined pages on 75 perforated sheets
• Binding: Lies flat when open
• Design: Six vintage Lefranc & Cie paint tube illustrations on warm cream ground
• Best for: Writing, sketching, studio notes, gifts for painters and art lovers

A Note from Jeff

Lefranc & Cie were colormen in the serious French tradition: suppliers to the ateliers, makers of the materials that Courbet and Monet and the generation after them actually used. The catalogue illustrations they produced to present their range to professional painters have a restrained authority that I find difficult to improve on. Putting those illustrations on a journal felt right. This is a notebook that looks like it belongs in a studio, because the image on its cover came from one.