I remembered when I was young occasionally seeing sets of watercolors with a very
large selection of colors.

Recently, I did some web searching, and encountered the kind of watercolor set that I was remembering.

It turned out that the set I was thinking of was the largest one they made, with
an assortment of 108 colors. After finding a few image results, mostly in eBay sales, I learned from one that the company that made these watercolor sets was named Page of London.

Further searching has turned up the fact that in addition to some licensed sets with Walt Disney characters, they had made a Miss Piggy set as recently as 1980 or thereabouts.

However, I haven't been able to find any information about the company. One site
giving information on companies mentioned, under that name, a clothing store in Britain which has apparently closed down.

Of course, these days, inexpensive toy watercolor sets, as opposed to those intended for professional artists, are pretty much all made in China. Things are
not totally bleak, as I've been able to determine that one company there makes a
set with as many as 36 colors - all I've been seeing are sets with up to 12 colors in stores these days.

Does anyone know anything more about Page of London - when it started making watercolor sets, and when (or if) it shut down? (I found one PDF from a high school in B.C. recommending water color sets by that company for children heading to school this fall.)

John Savard

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In addition to Page of London, another firm in England, L. L. Products, also made and sold similar sets. As the L. L. Products sets, although looking very similar, used different names for many of the colors, I think it is possible that they are a
separate firm, rather than the same sets being distributed under two names, but I am unsure.

John Savard

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