The Tube of Paint

What do Stephen Perry, George McGill, Johan Vaaler, George de Mestral, Walter Hunt, and John Goffe Rand have in common?

Each of the men listed invented an everyday common item, that while modest as far as technology goes, had a profound impact on how we live.  The effect was so profound that they were all immeditately forgottein and chances are that you’ve never heard of any of them.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Perry invented the rubber band, McGill gave us the stapler, Vaaler developed the paper clip, de Mestral invented Velcro, and Hunt invented the safety pin.  It is kind of hard to imagine life without any of those, and all have a fascinating story, but I want to focus on the seemingly modest contribution of John Rand.

Painters from the medieval period to the early Renaissance used tempera paints— made by mixing pigments with water adding an egg yolk or whole egg as a binder, sometimes with other additives like vinegar or wine to extend the drying time or alter the consistency.  Tempera paint dried quickly to a dull matte finish, so artists had to work on relatively small areas of the canvas and could not build up layers of paint.

Oil painting, which became popular in the 15th century, particularly through artists like Jan van Eyck, mixed pigments with linseed oil and offered advantages like slower drying time which allowed for blending and more nuanced color gradations, and was more forgiving on a variety of surfaces.   Gone was the dull matte finish, replaced by a finish that could vary from satin to glossy, with a a depth and luminosity due to the paint’s ability to be layered and blended while wet. This can create a sense of three-dimensionality and light within the painting that matte tempera does not naturally achieve

There was no doubt that oil paints in the hands of a skilled artist created a more satisfying painting, but the paints still had to be produced by the artists.  Artists prepared their own paints by grinding pigments (from minerals, plants, or other sources) and mixing them with a binder like linseed oil.  These mixtures were typically stored in animal bladders or glass jars.  However, these methods were inconvenient, messy, and poorly suited for travel or long-term storage, meaning that the artist was generally confined to working in his studio with a limited range of colors.  

This changed in 1841 when John Goffe Rand was issued U.S. Patent #2522 for an “Improvement in the Construction of Vessels or Apparatus for Preserving Paint.”  His apparatus was an airtight metal tube made of malleable tin for holding paint.  Originally Rand sold empty tubes to artists who could fill the tubes then crimp the open end using the brass cap to access their paints.  Within a year, art companies such as Winsor and Newton were selling paint tubes with preloaded paint.  (And they still sell both preloaded and empty tubes from their site here.)

This had several profound effects for artists.  No longer did an artist have to be a part time naturalist gathering pigments, then had to turn into a chemist trying to come up with the same shade of blue as the previous week to finish a painting.  And since the tubes would stay fresh for months or even years at a time, the artist could keep a variety of shades and tints and several colors.  The sale of such tubes even provided an incentive for art stores to begin experimenting with new synthetic colors such as cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and emerald green.

For the first time, artists could leave their studios, packing up their brushes and art supplies and could paint outdoors.  This innovation was instrumental to movements like Impressionism, where artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir embraced painting outdoors, or as they called it, en plein air.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's son, Jean Renoir, quoted his father as saying:

"Without colors in tubes, there would have been no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of what the journalists were to call Impressionism."

There was one more far-reaching change brought about by Rand’s little tin tubes.  In 1850, Lucius Sheffield was studying art in Paris.  When he returned home, his father, Dr. Washington Sheffield had just perfected a dental cream that he thought far superior to the existing tooth powders sold on the market.  His problem was how to package his new product.  When Lucius demonstrated the ease of applying paint from a tube, Dr. Sheffield knew he had found a solution to his problem.

It might surprise you that Dr. Sheffield’s original toothpaste in a tube is still on the market.  Amazon will sell you a tube in seven flavors, including chocolate.  (Yuck!). 

Dr. Sheffield’s company freely admits the idea for toothpaste in a tube came from the paint tubes for sale in in Paris, but John Rand is given no credit.   Not surprisingly, Rand was unable to protect his patent and received only small licensing fees for his invention.