Our Story

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.

Following many years of not finding a pastel he was happy with, John decided to make his own.  After years of experimenting, the soft pastels that you know and love today, were created and Unison Colour was born.

Manufactured pastels available on the market broke easily, were not consistent in texture and did not mirror our requirments for the perfect pastel.

For several years John 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. John and his wife 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.

To start with, the pastels were all made in the coach house at Thorneyburn in the Northumberland National Park. This served as a great base from which to grow. 

It allowed time to refine the pastels, develop new lines and increase the pastel base from 117 to 380 pastel colours.

As the years progressed, sales grew nationally and the Unison Colour brand continued to grow and be recognised by artists as the preferred pastel of choice.

Eventually, sales expanded into Europe. USA, Canada, and Australia followed a few years later.

The Unison Colour brand developed worldwide recognition. It became the gold standard of soft pastels and cemented the brand amongst the art community.

The quality of our pastels attracted the attention of an array of artists, many of whom run workshops which highlight the benefits of using our pastels over alternatives. 

We have developed a long standing partnership with those artists who help promote our products and help fine tune our recipes to make them the very best in the world.

In 2017 we launched our Associate Artist Programme. The programme continues to grow and now contains over 200 artists from around the world.