World Pigment Day: 22 March 2020

Today should have been the last day of our Colour and Poetry Symposium at the Slade School of Fine Art. However, like everything else, we have had to postpone this event because of the current pandemic. Jo Volley and I were going to announce at the symposium that we were going to nominate tomorrow, 22 March, as World Pigment Day – basically because we can! We still hope to celebrate this event even though most of us are in isolation or quarantine, I would like to share this with all of you and ask for your support. This initiative is not for profit and is all about collaboration and sharing between all the disciplines that use pigments and mostly just for fun!

We have chosen this date, because it marks the death of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28/08/1749-22/03/1832). Goethe was a polymath. In addition to his plays, poetry and prose, he wrote on botany, and importantly published his Theory of Colours in 1810 and went on to publish a series of influential monographs on the understanding of colour. The mineral goethite, an iron oxide hydroxide and the main constituent of (most!) yellow ochres is named after Goethe.

We will be celebrating this tomorrow with a live stream from 12 noon on Longplayer. Please find the link here to listen in.

#worldpigmentday