The Handmade Process

In pastel factories, pigments are mixed with water, gums and other additives in large mechanical mixers.  The pastel “dough” is then pushed through the barrel of an extruder by a long revolving screw.  The solid dough is forced through a circular opening at the extruder’s end.  It emerges from the extruder like a long pencil and is cut to stick lengths.  It drops onto a conveyer belt to go through a drying operation, then a wrapping operation.

The problem with extrusion,” Hersey says, “is that it squeezes the pastels very tight and compresses them.”  And they are probably overheated in drying.  This makes them hard, on the whole.  It alters their consistency. And alters their response to being used. 

In our handmade process, the pigment hardly gets pressed at all.  The sticks are rolled lightly.  It makes them very fluent when you use them. Like soft charcoal.

Creating consistency of response across the color spectrum was a particularly thorny problem for Hersey. Pigments vary in their physical properties. Many pigments will hold together after being mixed with water, rolled and dried.  Others fall to pieces.  For those Hersey adds a little weak starch or gum to give the best response without interfering with the color.

Many of our colors are pure and single pigments,” Hersey says. “On the whole they are blended, three or four or five different pigments together. But we blend in very little white or chalk.  Artists are generally looking for intense and dark pastels.  You can get sick of the endless arrays of pale pastel shades.  You want some really strong colors.  And those are just pigment and nothing else.”