Marketing paint (was: Re: Problem pigment

Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> > Judy Seigel wrote
>
> >
> On the 3rd hand, I think photographers
> > worry about this more than painters do...
>
> If this were true, then it would be photographers doing all the pigment
> testing and manning the pigment data websites and writing the books
> about pigments. But since Hilary Page and Bruce MacEvoy are painters,
> and their multitudinous readers and viewers and buyers are probably 99%
> painters, this statement seems disingenuous at best. Obviously painters
> care more about this than you give them credit for. And if it were only
> the occasional photographer buying paint who cared about the ratings,
> why would the manufacturers always have the lightfast ratings on the
> tubes and in the catalog listings? It seems pretty clear that painters
> do care about this.
>

And besides, if painters didn't care about lightfastness, there wouldn't
be any reason for Winsor & Newton to hide fugitive pigments in a
lightfast rating category called "B --moderately durable." Consider
what W&N's paint sales to photographers must be as a proportion of their
total watercolor paint sales--- infinitesimal! If painters don't care
about this, surely there wouldn't be any downside to W&N's simply giving
the ASTM rating for, say PR 83, (IV) along with the unvarnished
description that goes with it. ("Fails as a pigment for use in
watercolor paint.") Apparently W&N seem to believe that there is some
marketing benefit to concealing that information, otherwise why would
they bother? (Note that I've already demonstrated in another post that
in independent ratings, Winsor & Newton's PR 83 is quite as fugitive as
the rest of them, and moreso than some.)
  
kt
Received on Sun Jun 5 12:03:08 2005