Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.For those determined to preserve the midcentury essence of their Golden Lane apartments, or pick the most suitable colour for their Victorian wrought-iron railings, all roads lead to Papers and Paints. The DIY shop on Chelsea\u2019s Park Walk is staffed by a team of experts in colour history and its sample cards are organised by era, from the pale stone shades favoured by 19th-century decorators to the \u201cpurple pop\u201d and \u201chot mustard\u201d colours of the 1960s.\u00a0Now in its 65th year, Papers and Paints opened in 1960\u00a0as a typical decorating supplier, albeit one where the founder, Robert Baty, would mix custom formulations to match paint flakes customers brought in, all the while counselling them on colour choices. \u201cMy father had accidentally created a niche as a sort of thinking man\u2019s paint shop,\u201d says his son Patrick Baty, who joined the business in 1980 and still runs it today with his wife, Alex.\u00a0Soon after joining, Baty noticed a recurring theme. \u201cPeople would come in with requests for information about\u00a0the colours of the past,\u201d he recalls. It might have been the tonal preferences of neoclassical architect Robert\u00a0Adam (\u201cpsyche\u201d green and dusty \u201chebe\u201d pink) or the interior design of the Forbidden City, Beijing\u2019s Imperial Palace complex (centred on a bright \u201cMoorish red\u201d). Determined to assist his father, \u201crather naively\u201d, Baty decided to find them answers. In 1991, he began a research degree, investigating the colours used around 17th- to 19th-century English homes. In the archives at Scotland\u2019s Register House, he came across a brown envelope filled with handpainted colour samples from 1807. \u201cIt was amazing,\u201d he says, \u201clike finding a Dulux colour card in 200\u00a0years\u2019 time.\u201d He used the samples to form the shop\u2019s Traditional Colours range, which boasts shades of \u201csage\u201d, \u201cpeach blossom\u201d and\u00a0\u201cstraw\u201d. Major paint companies followed\u00a0suit with their own heritage collections, based on historical narratives he describes, slyly, as being\u00a0\u201csomewhat mythical\u201d.\u00a0One client brought yellow earth from Penrith and had it matched in masonry paintBefore Baty had completed his studies, he was approached by the National Trust to assist with the\u00a0restoration of the Dutch\u2011style stately home Uppark. A\u00a0stream of consulting projects followed, among them Tower Bridge, the British Museum, Kensington Palace and the V&A. For each, Baty uncovered the buildings\u2019 original wall colours as well as the various schemes that followed. And so, based on his research, Papers and Paints added new ranges for the \u201920s, featuring pastels such as \u201cshuffle blues\u201d and \u201ccloche pink\u201d, \u201930s, including \u201csmoke\u201d grey and \u201cmetropolitan\u201d red, and \u201940s \u201ccamouflage colours\u201d, which are surprisingly popular in modern kitchens. The project came full circle when Baty created a 1960s collection based\u00a0on the shop\u2019s earliest records.\u00a0Today, these shades are displayed in the narrow west\u00a0London shop, its off-white and \u201cfenching blue\u201d (a\u00a0soft\u00a0grey-green) walls mostly obscured by colour charts.\u00a0All\u00a0of the shades are available in finishes including\u00a0gloss, matte and eggshell (from \u00a360 for 2.5l) with\u00a0a \u00a340 surcharge for mixing a bespoke colour. An important part\u00a0of the shop\u2019s service is colour matching. Customers can bring in\u00a0a\u00a0scrap of wallpaper (or a Victorian\u00a0stable door, book jacket\u00a0or set of Tibetan prayer flags), and staff\u00a0use a spectrophotometer, a measurement device that\u00a0allows for\u00a0perfectly accurate colour matches, to\u00a0search\u00a0through the database of hundreds of thousands of\u00a0colours, built\u00a0from decades of other customers\u2019 requests. The staff\u2019s expertise\u00a0is unparalleled: one\u00a0former employee was\u00a0headhunted by\u00a0Apple to work at its\u00a0Silicon Valley headquarters.Visitors range from local tradespeople and DIY hobbyists to interior designers such as Ben Pentreath and Kate Guinness. Over the years, the shop has welcomed Superman actor Christopher Reeve and businessman Angus Ogilvy (hoping to surprise his wife, Princess Alexandra, with some fresh decor). The\u00a0requests they hear are delightfully diverse. One customer transported a small quantity of yellow earth from\u00a0behind a waterfall in Penrith and had it matched in\u00a0masonry paint to bring the palette of the Cumbrian landscape to their London townhouse.\u00a0With the historical collection complete, Patrick and\u00a0Alex, who oversees the day-to-day running of the shop,\u00a0collect colours on their travels; a typical example, \u201cFrench\u00a0Exterior Colours\u201d, mimics the colours used on antique wooden shutters. Meanwhile, Baty dedicates his time to an\u00a0array of consulting projects. That could mean a\u00a0visit to the Hogarth stairwell at St Bartholomew\u2019s Hospital, where\u00a0he chose a stone colour for the ceiling and\u00a0cornices to cohere with the artist\u2019s murals, or Kew Gardens\u2019 Palm House, where his discovery of a piece of ironwork that had\u00a0escaped stripping revealed that the famously white glasshouse was at one time a dark, fern green. \u201cAs I walk around the West End, virtually every hundred metres there is a building I\u2019ve worked on,\u201d he says\u00a0matter-of-factly. \u201cBut I still get a buzz because there\u2019s\u00a0always something new to learn.\u201d \u00a0Papers and Paints, 4 Park Walk, Chelsea, London SW10; @papersandpaints<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.For those determined to preserve the midcentury essence of their Golden Lane apartments, or pick the most suitable colour for their Victorian wrought-iron railings, all roads<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291416,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291414\/revisions\/291416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}