Kremer Pigmente

Kremer Pigmente began in 1977 when the chemist Georg Kremer was asked by a restorer friend to track down smalt, an intense cobalt-blue glass pigment that had gone out of production. Kremer researched and reproduced the historic recipe himself, and the one-man effort that followed covered more than 100 pigments within two years.

In 1984 the growing company moved into a disused flour mill in Aichstetten, in Germany's Allgäu region, which it still calls the Colour Mill. Production, storage, shipping, sales and a showroom now share the same building, and a significant share of the roughly 1,500 pigments in the current range — about 250 of them — are still hand-made there using historic formulas, alongside pigments recreated from lost or forgotten recipes such as ancient cobalt glass blues.

Kremer sells pigment as raw material rather than finished paint: individual jars of loose pigment, curated pigment sets, and the binders, oils and recipe guides that let a buyer grind their own watercolor, oil or ink paint at home. The company is described as the world market leader in pigments for monument preservation, restoration and fine art, and operates three of its own stores — Aichstetten, Munich and New York — plus more than 100 resellers worldwide.