BRITISH COLOUR STANDARD - The Story!
Founders Victoria Whitbread and Jackie Piper have worked together in the Homewares and giftware industry for the past 18 years; having originally met as design students in the 1990’s.
2006 -2014 Victoria and Jackie worked with Pantone® LLC USA to make commercial homewares.
They were responsible for, created and built the iconic Pantone® homeware range of espresso cups, mugs and other table-top goods.
The Pantone® mug featured (and still does) in advertising campaigns, TV shows and magazine articles & was described on many an occasion as the ‘best selling mug in the world’.
During this period Victoria and Jackie established strong relationships with high-end customers from all over the world and retain their goodwill, and are well known in our industry.
In addition to this, they worked as licensees for several years for The Eames Foundation, creating table-top and home wares collections from the Charles and Ray’s photography collections.
Other licences included Disney, The London Underground, English Heritage and The National Gallery.
After working for so many brands for so many years , they wanted to work on a brand of their own.
Discovering an old colour dictionary in an Oxfam shop (thrift shop) began a journey to
re-establish this long, forgotten colour brand, a treasure trove of colour & rich history first established in 1931.
Conceived in 1931 by the British Council, dictionaries of colour were created to standardise colour reproduction throughout The British Empire.
A collaboration between HM Government and eminent British dye-houses led to the creation of distinctive green bound-books for this purpose, comprising of colourful silk swatches and lyrical descriptions. The historical colour palettes were given evocative names derived from flora and fauna, as well as the history and traditions of colour
spanning a millennium.
British Colour Standard is now re-established and we have carefully restored this iconic colour collection with integrity and accuracy.
We bring back to life these bold, heritage colours for the 21st Century.
