London Pigment: Colour Dug From the City Itself

Earlier this year when I was researching natural pigments made from vegetables and fruits I came across Lucy Mayes who has an interesting slant on the making of pigments. her choice of raw materials and process is genuinely special something that sits right at the intersection of art, geology, history and a bit of urban magic. It’s called London Pigment, and it’s the ongoing project of artist and pigment maker Lucy Mayes, who has been quietly transforming the city’s raw material into a unique range of hand crafted pigments.

Now, when we think of colour, especially as painters, we often imagine it arriving in neat metal tubes, perfectly milled, beautifully consistent, sourced from who knows where. But what Lucy is doing flips that idea entirely. She literally goes out into London into the soils, the river edges, the demolished building sites, the railway cuttings and digs for colour. She collects clay, stone, brick dust, industrial residues, even Thames mud, from these, she creates pigments that are completely rooted in place.

It isn’t just colour. It’s geography, memory, mineral history. Each pigment comes with its own story: “this one was gathered in Hackney clay,” “this grey comes from a Victorian brick site,” “this red is iron rich earth from a railway line.” You’re not just dipping your brush into paint you’re dipping it into a tiny fragment of the city’s past.

After gathering the raw materials She washes it, sieves it, dries it, grinds it, and grinds it again. There are no added dyes, no artificial tints. Everything comes straight from the earth, exactly as London gives it. And because London is geologically a patchwork of history, layers of riverbeds, built over marshes, industrial strata you get this incredible variation. Deep ochres, smoky blacks, pale greys, rust reds.

As painters we often talk about “sense of place,” but Lucy’s pigments actually contain place. They behave differently, a bit raw but in the nicest way. When you mix them with oil, cold wax, gum arabic you get surfaces that feel alive, almost breathing with the particles that formed them. It’s a different experience to using standard manufactured pigments. There’s a tactile quality, a slight unpredictability, and for many artists that’s part of the joy. When you use these pigments, you’re literally putting London into the painting not as an image, but as a physical component of the work. It’s a kind of urban alchemy. And it ties us back to a time before industrial standardisation, when artists sourced colour from the land around them. Lucy has simply brought that ancient practice into a modern city.

Her project also taps into a much wider movement in contemporary art: a return to slow craft, material honesty, and ecological awareness. More and more artists are asking where their materials come from, how they’re made, what stories they carry. London Pigment answers those questions.

So if you ever get the chance to try these pigments whether you’re working in watercolour, oil, cold wax, or mixed media I highly recommend it,  They bring a depth and authenticit, and beyond that, they reconnect us to the ground beneath our feet.

In a city that’s constantly being rebuilt, scraped, dug up and transformed, Lucy Mayes gives us the chance to hold a piece of old London in our hands and turn it into art.

Available from L. Cornelissen & Son

London Pigment Company

The Wild Pigment Project

L. Cornelissen & Son was founded by Louis Cornelissen, a lithographer from Belgium who had been living in Paris until moving to London in 1848 following a period of political unrest. Rumour has it that J.M.W. Turner himself recommended to his friend Louis that London would be a good location to ply his trade. He set up in Drury Lane, specialising in lithographic supplies, before moving to Great Queen Street in 1855. As the business evolved, and printing became less of a manual process, the Cornelissen family diversified their stock to include brushes, papers, paints, canvases and gilding materials. By 1881, he was firmly established as an artists' colourman, and in 1884 the business changed its name from Louis Cornelissen to L. Cornelissen & Son.

The business closed in 1977 at the death of Len Cornelissen, the last member of the family, and was reopened in 1979 by Nicholas Walt. We were incorporated as L. Cornelissen & Son, before moving to Great Russell Street in 1988, where Cornelissen’s remains to this day.

We pride ourselves on our excellent customer service, our extensive range of products, and our expertise in printmaking, painting, pigments and gilding. Please visit our friendly shop, or ring or email our office for any enquiries, and we will be more than happy to help you.