people I specialist
S pecia I ist profi le
Roqer Hunt visits Patrick Baty, proprietor of Papers and Paints, which this
year is celebrating 50 years of innovative paint matching and supply
PHOTOGRAPHS CHRIS TERRY
'l remember sitting on the counter at Papers and
Paints in 1960, aged fou;'recalls Patrick Baty, whose
father Robert, founded the specialist paint company
in September of that year. Now, with Patrick and his
wife, Alex, as its owners, this remarkable business is
celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in the same shop
in Park Walk, SW10, just off Fulham Road.
Using money borrowed f rom an uncle,
Robert Baty and his then business part-
ner, Bill Ruttei opened Papersand Paints
in response to the growing trend for
home improvement. Their flyer, distrib-
uted to houses nearby, offered'personal
advice on technical problems and help
and suggestions on colour schemes'.
Robert was one of the first retailers in
the country to adopt the Robbialac
Colorizer svstem. which offered a few
hundred additional colours to the British
Standard range, but the shop s customers
wanted more. Papers and Paints devel-
oped a reputation as a colour specialist
and people f locked to the shop with any-
thing from clothing to furniture - even
pub signs - seeking paints to match.
Although Patrick would visit his father
frequentlV at Park Walk, he had no inten-
tion initially of going into the business.
Instead, he became a soldier but his
'fairly f ull military career' ended abruptly
when he disagreed with his commanding
officer over a posting. 'l resigned my
commission on the spot and found my-
self in civilian life with no training and no
preparation,' he explains.'The only thing
I had knowledge of was British art from
the late nineteenth and earlv twentieth
centuries, because my great-
grandfather was the artist Rob- YE:?:, p:1-.','t t
ert Bevan.'
Following a brief spell with
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a
Bond Street art deale[ and after running a picture-
framing business at the back of the shop, Patrick
inevitably became increasingly involved with Papers
and Paints and, eventually, he took over the business
when his father retired in 1990. Patrick's burgeoning
enthusiasm for colour and paint coincided with the
boom in paint effects and he was asked to help edit
Jocasta lnnes's b ook, Paint Magic. He then embarked
on a research degree focusing on the paints and ma-
terials used by eighteenth-century house painters.
58 HOUSE & OARDTN SEPTEI/BER 2O]O
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Today, the knowledge at the heart of Papers and
Paints spills out across the shop's counter in hand-
painted colour cards. A historical range reflects
colours from the applied arts. In Scotland, Patrick
discovered a set of painters'sample cards dating
from 1807 and, over a yea4 he colour-matched each
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by hand to produqe a traditional range of shades
from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Inevitably, there has been investment in techno-
logy. With colour-matching previously done purely
by eye, in 1994the company purchased a spectro-
photometer to aid the process. Even so, creating an
exact match can take up to seven days because the
colour has to dry completely before evaluation.
Patrick likens the process to naval gunnery: 'You aim
around the colour until you get a direct hit.' Few if
any, other companies have the ability to create a
colour that remains authentic under all lighting con-
ditions. The fragments of original colour brought in
by customers for matching need be no bigger than a
thumbnail, and range f rom chips of plaster to cricket
balls - even the coverof
Ihe Como/efePeeraoe. New
colours are constantly added to the
thousands already recorded on a vast
database that includes authentic
wartime camouf lage colours, a palette
reflecting virtually all the regions of
France, and a red oxide hue matching the
walls of the Forbidden City.
Others have seen the value of such
colours. Papers and Paints has been
employed by companies such as Dulux
and The Little Greene Paint CompanV in
conjunction with English Heritage, as
consultants in the development of new
ranges, and its expert advice is sought by
architects, film-set designers, historians
and the royal household - in 2OO7 the
business was granted a royal warrant.
Much of Patrick's consultancy work in-
volves sampling existing paint layers on
old buildings so that their history can be
understood. He removes chips of paint
for detailed analysis and uses a series of
microscopesto studythe cross section of
oaint lavers to determine the various
paint schemes that have been used.
Papers and Paints has been involved
in projects in the UK and abroad, ranging
from the Metrooolitan Museum of Art in
New York to Queen Charlotte's Cottage
at Kew. Here, the company produced
specially matched paint forthe entrance
. +' " hall andstaircasewhile,inthe
printroom,patrickmixedanine-
teenth-century green verditer
colour. At Brunel's Roval
Albert Bridge over the River Tamal he climbed the
structure at 1.30am to take paint samples while the
railway line below was closed.'l see myself as an
archaeologist,' he says, 'but the thrill of being on top
of that bridge, l85 feet above the rive4 took me back
to my days as a military f ree-fall parachutist'I
Papers and Paints: O2O-7352 8626; www.papers-
paints.co.uk I Queen Charlotte's Cottage and Kew
Palace are cared for by conservation charity Historic
Royal Palaces. For information, visit www.hrp.orq.uk
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OPPOSITE Patrick Baty is shown in

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Queen Charlotte's Cottage at Kew'
THIS PAGE Hand-painted colour
tiles are stacked in the shop (top
left). Samples are taken of each
order (top centre). Patrick works on
the spectrophotometer (top right).

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Paint chips are embedded in resin
blocks (below left) and examined
under microscopes (far lett and
below). A colour-mixing machine is
used to create the paints (left). A
Polaroid ofa set of18O7 painters'
sample cards (right). The business is
based in the Park Walk shop (below
right). Paint cans (bottom left).
Patrick mixed a nineteenth-century
green verditer for Queen Charlotte's
Cottage (bottom centre and right)

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