In Color

The Rainbow Fleet, H. Marshall Gardiner, shown in black and white

Tallmadge Ave

In Color

The world went gray on purpose. Some people kept painting it back in.

Thirty-one pieces, one of one ↓

On the cover: The Rainbow Fleet, H. Marshall Gardiner, the way his camera saw it. The color comes back just below.

Four to start with

Thirty-one pieces on this page, every one of them one of one. These four are where we'd start.

Pat McCarthy, children on a beach

Children on the Beach, Pat McCarthy, oil, 32" square

$695Take it home
Pat McCarthy oil of strawberries in a blue and white bowl

Strawberries in Blue & White, Pat McCarthy, oil on canvas

$425Take it home
The Rainbow Fleet by H. Marshall Gardiner, in color

The Rainbow Fleet, H. Marshall Gardiner, framed

$295Take it home
Mary Bland, cardinals

Cardinals, Mary Bland, signed

$175Take it home

Free shipping in the US · the other twenty-seven, and the story, below ↓

The gray years

In 2020 the Science Museum Group in London took the photographs of more than seven thousand everyday objects in its collection, made between 1800 and now, and counted the colors.

Gray went up. Brown and yellow went down. The wood, brass and leather left the telephone, the camera and the clock, and what replaced them was charcoal, silver and black. The museum's researchers called the finding preliminary, drawn from a collection nobody assembled at random. Walk down any street and you won't need the footnote.

Every new car built in the world in 2025

White 29% · Black 23% · Gray 22% · Silver 7% · Every other color 19%

Axalta Global Automotive Color Popularity Report, 2025.

In ColorThe Gray Years

How we got here

For most of history a bright color was hard to come by. Then, in the spring of 1856, it became cheap.

William Perkin was eighteen, home in London on the Easter break, trying to make quinine out of coal tar, the black sludge left over from making gas. He made purple instead. He patented it that August and called it mauve, and within a few years chemists were pulling one color after another out of the same waste.

What's interesting is what came next. For about a century people put that color on everything: wool, china, sails, kitchen tins, the walls of a boy's room. Then, with every color there is available at the hardware store, we chose gray.

The thirty-one pieces on this page come from the other side of that. Most of the color on them went on by hand, one brush or one stitch at a time, by people who wanted something in the house that wouldn't fade into the wall.

In ColorTallmadge Ave

By the brush · one color at a time

Before any of it was cheap, color was put down by a brush, a color at a time, and these seven were made that way. Red, cobalt, pink on silk, a gold the size of an eyelash, and two pieces of export porcelain that crossed an ocean to get here.

Imari flower plate, Japan1 Red, navy, green, gold
Imari, Japan. A teapot ringed with chrysanthemums, then waves, hexagons and lattice in radiating panels. Four colors packed tight and none of it too much.
Rosenthal cobalt and songbird dessert plates2 Cobalt, gilt
Rosenthal, Germany. Songbirds and botanicals inside a deep cobalt rim, five of them, for the part of dinner nobody hurries.
Hand-painted silk bird and flower artwork3 Deep pink on ivory
Painted on silk, about 1890 to 1920 by the dealer's tag. A bird in the branches and clusters of deep pink flowers on an ivory ground.
Miniature painting in the Mughal manner4 Warm and close
In the Mughal manner. These were made to be held, not hung, and painted with a brush of a few hairs. Hang it somewhere you pass close.
Flower plate, Japan5 Gold rim, green sprig
Japan. A plainer cousin of the Imari plate above — one flower, one gold rim — for whoever wanted the idea without the whole service.
Gump's of San Francisco hand-painted porcelain bowl6 Rust, gilt
Sold through Gump's of San Francisco, the import shop that spent a century putting Japanese porcelain into American dining rooms. Rust florals, a scalloped gilt rim.
Wood dresser box with mirror and floral lining7 Painted lining
A dresser box with a mirror in the lid and a floral lining painted where only the owner would ever see it.

By the brush · seven pieces

  1. 1Imari Flower Plate, Japan. $28Take it homeFound a home
  2. 2Rosenthal Dessert Plates, cobalt & songbird, set of five. $75Take it homeFound a home
  3. 3Bird & Flower on Silk, gilt frame. $125Take it homeFound a home
  4. 4Miniature Painting, Mughal manner. $150Take it homeFound a home
  5. 5Flower Plate, Japan. $15Take it homeFound a home
  6. 6Gump's Porcelain Bowl, rust florals, gilt rim. $40Take it homeFound a home
  7. 7Dresser Box, mirror lid, floral lining. $28Take it homeFound a home
In ColorThe Brush

After 1856 · the wool basket

Perkin's mauve went first into silk and wool. The dyes that followed it filled the sewing basket, and what came out of the basket is some of the brightest work in any house, made by people who never thought of themselves as artists.

Vintage needlepoint terrier pillow with green fringe8 Rust, fringe green
Two terriers in brown, taupe and rust, and a fringe of green somebody chose on purpose. Weeks of evenings, 14 inches square.
Vintage Phillies needlepoint pitcher9 Phillies red, navy, infield green
A Phillies pitcher mid-windup, stitched in red, white and navy on a green field. Still in its three-color custom frame, with the original handwritten tag.
Vintage sailboat needlepoint in weathered wood frame10 Blue-green, red sails
Sailboats on a choppy blue-green sea, with pops of red and navy. The frame is weathered gray wood. The gray is outside; the color is in the stitching.
Vintage needlepoint domestic scene with ladies and pumpkins11 Pumpkin orange, leaf green
Two ladies and a harvest of pumpkins, stitched in wool. The kind of scene somebody worked on all autumn.
Vintage needlepoint covered bridge winter scene12 Barn red, winter blue
A covered bridge in snow, in its original wood frame. The reddest thing in the picture is the bridge itself.

The wool basket · five pieces

  1. 8Needlepoint Terrier Pillow, green fringe, 14". $45Take it homeFound a home
  2. 9Phillies Needlepoint, pitcher, framed. $75Take it homeFound a home
  3. 10Sailboat Needlepoint, driftwood frame. $125Take it homeFound a home
  4. 11Needlepoint, Ladies & Pumpkins. $42Take it homeFound a home
  5. 12Needlepoint, Covered Bridge Winter Scene. $75Take it homeFound a home
In Color1856

1930 · Nantucket colors a photograph

In the early 1920s the Nantucket Yacht Club gave every boat in a new fleet of catboats a sail of its own color, so they could be told apart in a race, and called it the Rainbow Fleet. Later in the decade a smaller boat came in for the island's children, each with its own colored sail, so parents on shore could find their child.

The Rainbow Fleet by H. Marshall Gardiner13 Every sail a different color
H. Marshall Gardiner photographed the fleet rounding Brant Point in the late 1920s, and it went out as a postcard in 1930. His film was black and white. The color was added afterward by hand, by people who hadn't been on the water that day. One of the sailors, Helen Wilson Sherman, remembered that her green sail came out orange.

That picture became, for a lot of people, the only image of Nantucket they ever had. The fleet nearly died in the 1970s and was brought back by a man who had first sailed one in 1927. The sails are still every color.

Pat McCarthy, children on a beach14 Sand, sea, one red ribbon
Pat McCarthy, 32 inches square. Two children on a beach under a blue-gray sky, one with a pail, one in a straw hat tied with a red ribbon, sailboats out past them. Carved gilt frame.

Gardiner wasn't the only one painting a boat back into color after the fact. A sign painter named M. W. Mayland did the same thing with a brush instead of tinting dye, on a ship with a name instead of a number.

Nautical watercolor of the ship Corinthia15 Sea blue, gilt
M. W. Mayland, watercolor. The ship Corinthia under full sail, in an ornate gold frame of its own.

Nantucket · three pieces

  1. 13The Rainbow Fleet, H. Marshall Gardiner, framed, 27" × 33". $295Take it homeFound a home
  2. 14Children on the Beach, Pat McCarthy, 32" × 32". $695Take it homeFound a home
  3. 15Ship Corinthia, M. W. Mayland, watercolor, gold frame. $125Take it homeFound a home
In ColorNantucket

1938–1951 · Everybody paints

Anna Mary Robertson Moses stitched her pictures in yarn until arthritis made the needle hurt. At seventy-eight she picked up paint instead, and in October 1940 a New York gallery gave her a first solo show called What a Farmwife Painted. She began every picture with the sky.

Eleven years later a Detroit company called Palmer Paint brought its Craft Master kits to Macy's: a board, a brush, and every color numbered, for $2.50. By 1954 it had sold twelve million. The man who drew them never said they were art. They put a full set of colors in the hands of people who had never owned one.

After Grandma Moses, folk art landscape print16 Sky first, then fields
After Grandma Moses. Farmhouses, fields, fences and livestock under rolling mountains, in its old frame. A handwritten tag on the back calls it signed.
Will Moses, Parade Day17 Flag out
Will Moses is her great-grandson. Parade Day, hand-signed, 155 of 500: a turn-of-the-century town out for a celebration, flag up, horses in the street.
Pair of 1960s paint-by-number horse paintings18 By the number
Two colts, 1960s, oil on board. Filled in one number at a time and framed by someone who thought enough of it to hang it.
Amish folk art print by XHan Newswanger19 Primitive red, green
XHan Newswanger, Pennsylvania. The same unschooled, say-it-plainly tradition as Grandma Moses, working the other side of the state line.

Everybody paints · four pieces

  1. 16After Grandma Moses, landscape print, framed. $275Take it homeFound a home
  2. 17Parade Day, Will Moses, 155/500, signed. $325Take it homeFound a home
  3. 18Paint-by-Number Colts, 1960s, pair. $145Take it homeFound a home
  4. 19Amish Folk Art Print, XHan Newswanger, framed. $95Take it homeFound a home
In ColorEverybody Paints

The colors nobody had to make

Some color was never anyone's invention. The male Blackburnian warbler has the only orange throat of any warbler in North America. Thomas Pennant named it in 1785 for Anna Blackburne, an English naturalist who kept her own museum, and the first scientific description of the bird was written from a hand-colored engraving.

Mary Bland, Blackburnian warblers20 Flame orange
Mary Bland, signed. A pair of Blackburnian warblers among leaves, berries and blossom, in the original gold frame and brown mat, with her label on the back.
Mary Bland, cardinals21 Red in the evergreens
Mary Bland's cardinals, a male and a female in evergreen branches. Same hand, same gold frame.
Summer Flowers watercolor, Viva Guifart22 Daisy, pink, lavender, blue
Viva Guifart, watercolor. Daisies painted thick enough to throw a shadow, pale pink sprays, lavender at the top, against blue.
Floral still life oil, signed T. Kelly23 Coral against red
T. Kelly, oil. Coral, cream, and a red that shouldn't sit next to the coral and does. The paint stands up off the canvas.
Bowl of rose color flowers, L. Schull, circa 193224 Rose, leaf green
L. Schull, circa 1932. A bowl of flowers named for their own color — rose is a flower before it is anything else.
Watercolor of a weathered door and blue hydrangeas25 Hydrangea blue, weathered gray
A weathered door and the hydrangeas that grew up past its hinges. Even the gray in this one is doing some work.
Hand-painted game bird platter with scalloped green border26 Game-bird brown, green border
A quail platter with a scalloped green border. The kind of thing that only came out of the cupboard for a dinner with a reason.
Pat McCarthy, English setter with pheasant, oil painting27 Setter brown, pheasant gold
Pat McCarthy, oil. An English setter and the pheasant it's found, in a gilt lace-border frame.
Pat McCarthy oil of strawberries in a blue and white bowl28 Strawberry red, blue and white
Pat McCarthy, oil on canvas. Strawberries spilling out of a blue and white bowl, the red doing exactly what it's there to do, in a wide gilt frame.
Pat McCarthy watercolor of a rabbit in a red chinoiserie beaker29 Red beaker, gray rabbit
Pat McCarthy, watercolor. A gray rabbit set down in a red chinoiserie beaker, gold beaded frame.
Pat McCarthy rabbit painting, gilded miniature on Florentine board30 Gilt and warm brown
Pat McCarthy, oil, 4 by 6 inches. A rabbit on an antique Florentine board, gilded frame to match.

Birds and flowers · eleven pieces

  1. 20Blackburnian Warblers, Mary Bland, signed, 16" × 20". $175Take it homeFound a home
  2. 21Cardinals, Mary Bland, signed, 16" × 20". $175Take it homeFound a home
  3. 22Summer Flowers, Viva Guifart, watercolor, 22" × 26". $175Take it homeFound a home
  4. 23Floral Still Life, T. Kelly, oil, carved frame. $185Take it homeFound a home
  5. 24Bowl of Rose Color Flowers, L. Schull, circa 1932. $225Take it homeFound a home
  6. 25Weathered Door & Blue Hydrangeas, watercolor, framed. $90Take it homeFound a home
  7. 26Game Bird Platter, scalloped green border. $120Take it homeFound a home
  8. 27Setter with Pheasant, Pat McCarthy, oil, gilt frame. $285Take it homeFound a home
  9. 28Strawberries in Blue & White, Pat McCarthy, oil on canvas. $425Take it homeFound a home
  10. 29Bunny in Red Chinoiserie Beaker, Pat McCarthy, watercolor. $150Take it homeFound a home
  11. 30Rabbit Miniature, Pat McCarthy, gilded Florentine board. $250Take it homeFound a home
In ColorBirds & Flowers
Naive still life of red tulips

No. 31 · One to note

So It Will
Not Vanish

Tulip red, yellow-green

A dozen red tulips in a glass vase on a doily, painted by someone who wanted to keep them. On the back, in blue ink, a mother tells her son Peter she is giving back his bouquet so it will not vanish. A second note, dated 2007, thanks someone named Martha for helping it find its way back. We don't know any more than that. One tulip leans out of the vase the way they do by the third day.

$125

Take it home
In ColorThe Tulips

Before you go

Thirty-one pieces. The only gray thing here is one picture frame.

Everything on this page is in stock and one of one, from a $15 flower plate to a Pat McCarthy beach scene. Most of the color on it went on by hand. If you'd rather start with where things came from than what color they are, there's a page for that.

Michele & Christine

Made for Export, four hundred years of the export trade →

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