It began, as many great things do, with a whisper. A whisper carried on the scent of linseed oil, the rustle of cotton rags, and the fervent belief in a way of painting that was, frankly, disappearing. It was 1982, the world was saturated in synthetic brilliance, and a small workshop nestled in the heart of rural Worcestershire, England, was quietly determined to restore the lost art of traditional alkyd paint. The founders, Elias Thorne and Beatrice Finch, weren’t driven by ambition or profit, but by a profound respect for the materials and the centuries-old techniques they represented. They believed – with an almost unsettling conviction – that true color resided not in the pigments themselves, but in the way they interacted with the binder, the oil, and the very spirit of the artist.
Elias, a former textile conservator, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of oils and their behavior. Beatrice, a gifted botanist, brought an intuitive understanding of plant-based materials, an understanding that shaped their approach from the outset. Their early experiments were, by all accounts, chaotic. They chased the elusive ‘bloom’ – that shimmering, iridescent effect that only the finest alkyds achieved – with relentless dedication. They failed countless times, burning through mountains of linseed, poppyseed, and walnut oil, each failure a lesson etched into their memory. But they never lost sight of their goal: to create paints that were not just beautiful, but fundamentally responsive to the artist’s touch.
The heart of Lozano Alkyds lies in their carefully crafted binders. They don’t use commercially available ‘modified’ oils. Instead, they distill their own, meticulously controlling every variable. The process begins with cold-pressed linseed oil, sourced from specific fields in Norfolk, England, known for their unusually high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids. This, combined with poppyseed oil – grown in the Scottish Highlands under the watchful eyes of a solitary farmer named Hamish – creates a complex blend that is remarkably stable and capable of producing breathtaking colors.
But it’s not just about the oil itself. Lozano Alkyds incorporates a secret ingredient – a trace amount of fermented elderberry extract. This seemingly insignificant addition, discovered by Beatrice during her botanical studies, dramatically alters the drying rate of the paint, allowing for unparalleled control over layering and blending. Some whisper that it’s a technique passed down through generations of Worcestershire herbalists, a connection to a lineage of artisans who understood the subtle language of plant matter.
The paint is then meticulously ground using a traditional stone muller, a process that takes hours, even days, for each batch. Elias recounts countless evenings spent in the workshop, the rhythmic thump of the muller a meditative soundtrack to his work. “It’s not just about creating paint,” he once said, “it’s about engaging in a dialogue with the material, understanding its needs, anticipating its behavior.”