Caricaturist Tom Richmond points us to a fascinating website that seeks to catalogue the history of art supplies, in colour! The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies presents a growing database of images that will be familiar to many an ageing artist.

I like the idea so much I immediately went rummaging through some old boxes in the garage and dug out a few relics of my own to submit to the site. You can see some of my collection in the photo above but, rest assured, I’ve got more, somewhere. I used to have a lot more but I got rid of most of it when we moved almost nine years ago.

If you remember the days when French curves were not just something you saw on the covers of certain types of magazines, or when a compass was not just something you used to find magnetic north, or if the distant smell of a Yoken permanent marker still lingers in your nostrils… then the Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies will have you reliving the good old days, when it took hours of effort to complete a simple line drawing, in one colour!

Aaahh, the memories. Kids have got it far too easy these days. But us old dogs will have the last laugh when the Zombie Apocalypse comes and the power grid is destroyed and we have to use a straight edge and a ruling pen to draw a straight line.