Color Chart & Composition of Colors

Qualities of Conservation Colors

Pigments & Resins

Price List

Conservation Colors for the 21st century

Gamblin Conservation Colors are stable, reversible and suitable for use with a wide array of painting styles and techniques. Their innovative low molecular weight resin binder also makes Gamblin Conservation Colors safer to use.

Conservation scientists' criteria for a new kind of conservation color included stability, safety of use, quality of manufacture, optical and working properties. Robert Gamblin has formulated artists' materials for 26 years. In 1994, he joined the research team after conservation scientists observed that making paints by hand-grinding resulted in a somewhat coarse, glossy paint which lacked the smooth paste consistency of commercially prepared paints. The collaborative goal was to develop a new kind of conservation color from lightfast, permanent materials with enhanced working and aging properties.

Conservation colors made from a low molecular weight resin binder have better optical properties and better handling properties than paints based on polymeric resin. Aldehyde resins are a more appropriate binder than some other low molecular weight resins because they are slightly polar and wet pigments more easily. The accelerated age testing was done at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Once the binder was accepted, the team agreed that the new paints should be fairly lean and slightly matte. Viscosity and sheen can be easily altered by adding binder.

Gamblin Artists Colors Co. produced four trial batches of paint to establish correct pigment/ratio binder for smooth brushing and easy reducibility with medium. Conservators in North America and England participated in testing. During the initial test phase the new Gamblin paints were used for retouching on over one hundred treatments from Trecento Italian to 20th century paintings. Gamblin Conservation Colors have proven useful for all techniques of inpainting including glazing. The paints have good covering power and little change in color when dry.

We gratefully acknowledge the work of Rene de la Rie, Mark Leonard, and Jill Whitten for leading this project, the scientific department of the National Gallery in Washington for their technical work, and to the conservators in the US, Canada, and England for their experimentation and feedback.

Technical papers will be posted to our web site as they become available.