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John hersey sifting pigment

The Beginning

Unison Colour was founded by artist John Hersey who, after many years of not finding a pastel he was happy with, decided to make his own. After years of experimenting, the Unison Colour soft pastel that you know and love today, was created.

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Our short film...

Take an intimate tour of Unison Colour HQ, while hearing from Kate Hersey, who tells us about the humble beginnings of Unison Colour, and son Dan, on moving onwards into the future.

Our story vid still kate

The Old Rectory

John had always found inspiration in the clarity of light and subtlety of colour in Northumberland, and in 1980 he moved with Kate and their 4 children to an Old Rectory in the Northumberland National Park.

The Old Rectory set amongst fields and woodland, with a dramatic blue sky with wispy clouds.

John Hersey

John Hersey was born in 1925. He was a student at the Byam Shaw School of art in London where he won a Rome Scholarship and lived in Italy for several years. On returning to the UK he ran his own business ‘Fine Art Photography’ while continuing with his own work. Over the years he became more and more interested in and passionate about colour.

John and Kate at The Old Rectory
John at work in the studio.
John hands making pastels sml

Colour Vision

The project began when John decided that the manufactured pastels available on the market broke easily, were not consistent in texture and did not mirror his colour vision. For several years he worked on methods of production, colour sequences and the texture of his pigment mixtures.

 

In 1987 he decided to offer the results to fellow pastellists. He and Kate took the original range of colour sets (then just 117 pastels!), and the kitchen dresser, to an art materials show in London. To their surprise there was an immediate interest.

Good Outlook

Signs of Growth

To start with, the pastels were all made in the coach house and the top spare bedroom in the house was used for packing and storage. Eventually, as sales expanded in the USA, things became easier and they were able to construct another workshop and a packing room.

For John, it was a mission to create a world of colour.

John Hersey in his studio experimenting with colours.
  • New workshop

    New Workshop

    A new workshop was built to accommodate the extra sales to the US.

  • Hazy day in the countryside

    Tarset

    A hazy day over the fields to Sidwood.

  • Looking out over the coach house at Unison Colour.

    The Coach House

    The Coach House which houses one of the pastel making studios.

"With all the obvious limitations, the sets are constructed so they can been seen as separate colours, or as a movement around a centre and as a unity, a unison, their differences dissolved. That is what these colours are about, to help realise beauty."

John Hersey

John Hersey in his studio experimenting with colours.

Find out more

What makes Unison Colour Soft Pastels so special?

Now you know our history, what do you know about our process?

Why Unison Colour?Shop Online

  • Blendable

  • Lightfast

  • Mixed Media

  • Soft and Smooth

  • Highly Pigmented

  • Flexible

  • White dollops in colour sml screen
  • Red pigment in a bowl
  • Orange and violet pigment

Colour Chart Guidance

We believe the colours in our web based colour chart are a faithful representation of our pastel range. But with any colours portrayed on the internet, there’s a whole heap of variables which mean that what you see, may not be what we see. That said, there’s some things that can be done to mitigate some of the variance.

Mobile phone and tablet screens tend to be pretty good for colour, so they’re always worth using, when viewing our colour chart.

We hate to say it, but cheaper computer displays, including laptops, can be rather hit and miss, in both colour and contrast, so they might not reveal the depth of the colour, as well as the true tone.

If you’re really keen on getting your computer up to speed on colour representation, you can use a calibration device to reach your display's fullest potential.

With all that said, if you think we’re way off the mark with any of the colours then, by all means let us know, and we’ll give it another shot.