Company Background

Unison Colour Soft Pastels is based in a small village in England called Northumberland (near Scotland). It's owned and managed by an artist named John Hersey. As you might imagine, a stone barn and stone house are the company's headquarters and primary manufacturing facility.

Hersey himself is an artist who yearned for more natural colors, then made them himself. Working through trial and error, and plenty of experimentation, Hersey released his first set of 18 pastels in 1987. A bit more than a decade later, Unison pastels are among the most desired in the world. (There's an excellent visit to the Unison factory in the November/December 1999 issue of Pastel Journal magazine; www.pasteljournal.com or 888-711-5544).

In the US, Unison pastels are distributed by Jack Richeson & Co. (www.richesonart.com). The company is generous with color charts, answers to specific questions, and so on. I could not find a Unison web site, but the Richeson web site contains plenty of useful information about Unison pastels.

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Product Background

Unison pastels differ from other pastels in several significant ways.

First, they lay down a dense coat of pigment, so the experience is far more like painting than drawing.

Second, they are manufactured in three different sizes, the largest being 4 3/16 inches long and about an inch in diameter. All are wider at the mid than they are at the ends.

Third,and certainly most important, the colors are formulated without the usual reliance via black or white. Each individual color in the range is individually created. This results in more expense (of course), also results in a far better palette.

The palette is large, but it is organized in a most reasonable fashion. There are fifteen groups of colors. One contains reds, another is comprised of red earths, two contain only greens, another has only blue-violets. You can buy any of these sets individually (each one Contains precisely 18 colors), or you can buy UNISON pastels in other configurations.

Getting Started with UNISON Pastels

UNISON pastels are available as single sticks, but they're not merchandised in a big open rack. Instead, each stock is boxed separately and all are displayed on a spinner rack. Sticks cost up to $4 each.

You can begin with a set of 18 pastels, and you can choose between assortments for general use, portrait, landscape (each costs about $60) or southwest (including costly turquoise, which raises the price above $70).

Most people who try Unisons fall hopelessly in love with their luxurious density, so you may find yourself regretting the smaller set purchase. Better to start with a more robust set of 36 (about $120). Similar coices: portrait, generalist, or landscape.

Getting Serious About Unison Pastels

Several options are available for tjose who want to own more Unisons. The boxed sets of 72 sticks cost under $250.

The complete set of 288 colors costs $860-- but you'll spend a few dollars more to include the newer turquoise sticks.

Better, at least for the artist who has settled into some specialization, would be the beginning of a collection of color range boxed sets. These cost about $60 each for just the yellow-green earth tones, or just the yellow values.

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