Paint & Colour Mixing: A practical handbook for painters, decorators and all who have to mix colours, containing 72 samples of paint of various colours, including the principal graining grounds

In Short

Arthur Seymour Jennings’s handbook provides a direct, comprehensive guide for trade decorators and mixing technicians facing an unstandardized, often misleading industrial market. Moving step-by-step from foundational materials to precise proportions, the book addresses the practical realities of mixing over four hundred shades, preparing wood or metal bases, and testing raw pigments for adulteration. It remains a definitive period snapshot of early twentieth-century decorative crafts, industrial trade standards, and the chemistry behind traditional pigments.

The Story

Jennings opens his technical guide with a clear statement of purpose: bridging the gap between complex theoretical chromatically published treatises and the immediate, daily demands of the practical painter. Rather than dwelling on abstract optical theories, he immediately shifts to the physical workshop floor. He breaks down the essential mechanical tools required to work efficiently, such as wire-gauze strainers to eliminate waste and custom mixing spoons designed to clean out the tight edges of commercial paint cans.

From these physical fundamentals, Jennings moves directly into the quantitative science of paint composition. He explores the properties of structural bases like white lead, zinc white, lithopone, and barytes, carefully weighing their advantages in body and opaqueness against concerns like toxicity or atmospheric discoloration. He tackles the chaotic state of trade nomenclature, demonstrating how various commercial manufacturers market identical pigment combinations under dozens of conflicting, regional labels. To fix this confusion, he systematically establishes precise mixing ratios across every major color category: grays, reds, blues, yellows, greens, and browns. Each section provides specific, numerical part-based formulas for obtaining distinct shades, such as adding precise portions of lamp black, vermilion, or ultramarine to white lead or zinc bases.

The middle section shifts focus toward specialized trade applications, particularly ground and graining colors. Jennings details how to lay down properly proportioned undercoats to simulate various woods like oak, mahogany, rosewood, and walnut, providing standardized average recipes compiled from tradesmen across the country.

In the final movement of the book, Jennings pivots from mixing formulas to rigorous workshop quality control. He provides practical, diagnostic techniques for testing pigment quality, opacity, and fineness using draughtboard pattern boards and palette knives. He details methods for spotting adulterants in vehicle oils and driers, such as smelling for paraffin in turpentine or testing drying times on glass. The manual closes with a comprehensive reference guide, cataloging pigment durability under atmospheric exposure, heat tolerance, and chemical reactivity with lead or lime, before concluding with specialized workshop recipes for putties, blackboards, and protective coats.

How It Unfolds

The trade demand Jennings identifies a critical gap between complex academic color theories and the daily operational needs of working decorators who require fast, reliable paint mixtures. He presents practical tools, including wire-gauze strainers and specialized scoops, designed to streamline workshop preparation and eliminate material waste.

Establishing the base The technical discussion centers on white bases—specifically evaluating white lead, zinc white, and non-poisonous substitutes—comparing their relative opacity, hiding power, and resistance to atmospheric gases. Jennings establishes standard proportions of oils, turpentine, driers, and pigments for distinct surfaces.

Sorting the spectrum Addressing the widespread confusion in commercial color names, Jennings categorizes color families into clear, proportioned formulas. He establishes distinct definitions, such as distinguishing a simple black-and-white "grey" from a tinted "gray," while supplying exact volumetric recipes for hundreds of distinct shades.

Preparing the surface The focus shifts to specialized decorative techniques, particularly the ground and graining mixtures needed to imitate natural woods like oak, walnut, and mahogany. Jennings provides averaged nationwide ratios to create consistent bases for decorative finishing.

Testing and workshop practice The book closes with analytical methods for detecting adulterated materials, testing pigment coverage on checkerboard panels, and verifying drying times. Jennings supplies reference tables categorizing chemical stability, heat resistance, and lime compatibility alongside specialized formulas for job-site preparations.

The People

Arthur Seymour Jennings The author and editor acts as a practical mentor throughout the manual. Driven by a desire to bring clarity, consistency, and standard methods to a disorganized trade, he constantly prioritizes workshop utility over abstract academic theory, grounding every recommendation in fifteen years of industry feedback.

White Lead The traditional workhorse of the painting trade. It seeks to provide unmatched body and hiding power on structural surfaces, but its toxic nature and vulnerability to sulfurous atmospheric gases create operational drawbacks that require careful handling.

Zinc White The clean, non-poisonous alternative to lead. It aims to deliver a bright, pure white base ideal for delicate tints, though its lower structural body requires clever blending with barytes or other pigments to achieve adequate coverage.

The Commercial Manufacturers The chaotic collective entity of the early industrial paint market. Their practice of applying dozens of conflicting proprietary names to identical pigment mixtures creates the very confusion that Jennings sets out to systematically dismantle.

In Its Own Voice

"The author, however, has ample justification for the publication of this little work in the fact that he has during the last fifteen years received, in his capacity as editor of painters’ publications, enquiries almost daily for a book giving colour mixtures..."

Jennings explains the immediate real-world demand from tradesmen that prompted him to write a direct, highly practical handbook.

"A 'grey' is an admixture of black and white... When a colour is added to the black and white the admixture is called a 'gray'..."

The text demonstrates its dedication to precision by establishing clear terminology to resolve common trade ambiguities.

"It is important to notice that in all cases of practically testing paints the results are obtained by comparisons being made, and hence it is necessary in every case to have a standard with which to compare the sample to be tested."

Jennings outlines his core diagnostic philosophy, emphasizing comparative testing to protect painters from low-quality materials.

What It's Really About

Beneath its collection of recipes and workshop tables, the book is a crusade for industrial standardization and practical chemistry. Jennings addresses a historical moment when traditional artisan workshop methods were colliding with mass-manufactured, often adulterated commercial products. By providing exact quantitative ratios, diagnostic testing methods, and precise definitions, the text argues that house painting and decorating must be approached as a systematic science rather than an unreliable art. It seeks to empower the individual worker with the chemical literacy needed to evaluate raw materials independently, reject inferior products, and achieve predictable, long-lasting decorative results.

Why Read It Today

This handbook appeals to modern restoration specialists, material historians, and artists interested in historical craft techniques. It offers a rare, unvarnished window into the physical reality of early twentieth-century interior decoration, detailing the exact chemical recipes, pigment sources, and wood-graining methods of the era. Reading the manual feels like stepping directly into a historical paint shop, surrounded by the scents of raw linseed oil, spirits of turpentine, and ground earth pigments.

The reader must navigate period-specific technical vocabulary, obsolete proprietary brand names, and archaic chemical designations. Furthermore, the book explicitly documents the casual historical trade use of highly toxic materials, such as lead bases and arsenic-based greens like Paris green, which modern readers must view strictly through a historical lens rather than as modern instructional advice. Yet despite these period barriers, Jennings’s clean, direct prose and unwavering focus on practical utility make the text exceptionally scannable, clear, and engaging for anyone studying historical trade crafts.