Friday, March 18, 2011

Beautiful Designs

Some time ago I posted about the handmade books I made for a pay it forward exercise. When I was in London I already knew I needed to be thinking about what to make when I came upon these watercolour paints at The National Portrait Museum.

I like the way they've grouped the colours on each disk. I often look at them and wonder why they thought light brown needed to be with yellow while dark brown was grouped with green. Maybe they were making disk palettes according to environments. The yellow disk looks like the rocky hills of the Namib Desert to me, while the green is the white pine forests of northern Wisconsin. The blue disk the ocean, the deeper down you go the darker the colour until it goes black.

These paints are most lovely because of the clever way the disks stack together and lock in place.

I'm not often enthralled by objects but I certainly am by this one.

2 comments:

bonita said...

I like the paints, too. They remind me of the Indian spice box, Masala Dabba. There is a beautiful stainless one with a transparent cover.

Anonymous said...

They are really cool. They actually look like ornaments you should put on the coffee table. A bit of a work of art in themselves!