Mark Golden on Paint

I was looking around the internet and saw several references to “Unbleached Titanium” and I thought I fill in at least some of the gaps.

Actually the name Unbleached Titanium was given to a product first produced by Bocour Artist Colors in the mid 1960’s. Its origin was a Titanium White pigment that was off spec. but before it was detected it was made into an the acrylic paint. Instead of discarding the batch, my father, Sam Golden, renamed the color; and so “Unbleached Titanium” was born in the Aquatec line. After this batch of pigment was used up the Bocour Company began to produce it using some umbers to match the original color.

When we began producing acrylics in 1980 we found a Titanium Dioxide that gave us very close to the same feel as this very popular color, (a bit warmer) but in fact was produced by a different process. This Titanium Dioxide that makes up this buff color differs from traditional Titanium Dioxide that most people are familiar with. It is a larger particle size, has different oil absorption and the buff color that makes this product so popular is created within a crystalline structure that contains a minor amount of iron oxide (1.5%). We named this color “Titan Buff” not to confuse it with the old Unbleached. It is actually an individual pigment and not a post blend as most companies produce.

My father was a prolific inventor who loved to play with paint. Sometimes these efforts would yield amazing results, but often, he was just as likely to be trying to figure out how to fix something that just simply screwed up. He was constantly trying to create value out of errors, even if it was just to learn something new. In the case of Unbleached Titanium his error gave birth to a new color that has become a standard through the industry.