Made in the traditional stone ground milling process.

Many years ago, Jack Richeson made the decision to develop and then manufacture a top line of watercolor. He was convinced that he could whip up a formula in minutes and enter the market in weeks. How naive we can all be at times. It was in 1994 when he first consulted with his late dear friend, Zoltan Szabo.

"Zoltan was a gentle man but a demanding monster when it came to watercolor. Thank goodness he was my friend because he made the lectures gentle. I consulted the Ralph Meyer Book, I read Hilary Page’s great book and then studied the several books by Wilcox. I had many discussions with several old Grumbacher color chemists. I also had many discussions with famous color maker Jacques Blockx.

"Two things became obvious.
1. My "quickie" watercolor project would not be quick and certainly not painless.
2. So much of the information was not fact but in many cases opinion from a variety of very learned people. The problem was that the opinions started out the same and became very different as you got deeper into the project.

"Six times I threw away all that I had done and seven times I started over. Finally I started having long serious conversations with Stephen Quiller. Steve’s opinions ran very close to those of Zoltan Szabo’s. Although the two greats had different styles, strong threads tying the varying opinions started to surface. I then began to study the work of Tom Lynch, Chris Van Winkle, Tom Fong and Milford Zornes.

"Always going back to Zoltan and Steve Quiller, the basis for the line started to develop. My dear friend and great advisor Zoltan Szabo passed away in 2003. I will miss him always. The burden then shifted totally to my friend Steve Quiller. There were many times that I would ask him ‘ why that company’s red’ or ‘why just one color in that brand? What do you mean by staining colors?’

"But with all of his input, we still had the problem of ‘lightfastness’ and health safety. After nine years and tons of headaches, I believe that we have developed the true professional watercolor. The paint is made through the traditional stone ground milling process. The color is pure, and it’s expensive, but as a collector, it’s what I want the artist to use in any watercolor that I buy. In my den at home, I have the first watercolor that I ever purchased. I was making $78.00 a week as a truck driver at the time and I paid four hundred dollars for the painting. Now 54 years later, I have this white framed paper hanging on my wall. All that is left of the beautiful artwork is a pale ghost of the artist’s work.

"I truly believe that the Stephen Quiller range of watercolors is the finest ever made. Available in 35 colors in 15ml open stock tubes and sets."