In the Strad Magazine January 2020 edition, my colleague Hugh Withycombe and I published an article on madder lake pigments. These types of colour pigments were used by the great violin makers of the past to add additional colour to their instruments. They continue to be used by many modern makers.

Above is the first page of the article

The article resulted from our work at the Oberlin College Violin Making summer program in the US. With special thanks to violin makers, Charlie Dequincey, Ute Zahn, Garth Lee and Kae Sato-Goodsell for their help along the way as well.

Many recipes on pigment making have been published in the past. Our work compared different recipes types. Our aim was to understand the effects of the different methods on the colour, transparency and intensity in our finished coloured pigments.