How to Create the Perfect Palette with Farrow & Ball’s Color Curator Joa Studholme
After thirty years as decision-maker for the beloved British paint company, the tastemaker looks no further than life itself for inspiration
Joa Studholme was attributing colors to the human experience even in her earliest memories. The lauded color curator of Farrow & Ball still remembers her childhood habit of describing holidays through their best-suiting shades. “My mom used to say there was a holiday that I used to call ‘the one with pink sky,’” she tells Galerie. “I have always used colors to describe things around me.” Into adulthood, she discovered her passion for decorating, and the overlap of her two passions landed her the coveted role of orchestrating the iconoclastic British paint and wallpaper brand’s strictly numbered 132-hue catalog, called the Signature Palette.
In her taste-making role, Studholme has helped put the chromatic touch onto over 4,000 interiors in the last 30 years. She has built intimate relationships with numerous clients through shrouding their personal habitats in the brand’s cult-status shades like Hague Blue and Elephant’s Breath. Earlier this year, the Londoner embarked on one of the 78-year old company’s rare outings and released twelve new paint colors. The closely-watched feat, which necessitated retiring twelve existing shades to carve room for newcomers, is an instinctive urge. Studholme describes the task as a “decision which just feels right at a certain time” rather than what might feel like a calculated move.
The release signals a poignant landmark for the heritage brand. For the first time in its history, Farrow & Ball dug through its storied archive to revive past colors with timeless punch. Etruscan Red is among these three revitalizations; an earthy tint of cardinal, the commanding clay-like concoction pays homage to antiquity and our timeless appetite for beauty through nature’s own bearings.
“They are absolutely right for the moment—there was no point in tweaking them, so we brought them back as they are,” says Studholme about the specific red as well as the Mediterranean light-kissed Sap Green and the demure Broccoli Brown. “We look for what is exciting and right for the moment,” she says. The course requires examining the current social landscape and taking into account cultural and even political impacts. Marmelo, a juicy orange tone, is one of the new releases, fitting for a summer makeover for its saccharine finish; Duster is another bold jab at yellow with its tongue-in-cheek name and hospitable complexion.
The step of christening her colors with names is a journey Studholme quite relishes. She, in fact, utilizes the task as an exercise on bonding with her everyday surrounding. Nature is the first source that comes to mind for inspiration on a poetic name. The curator, however, does not shy away from what she calls “things right under our noses.” She suggests seeing mundane objects around us with a new pair of eyes through these names. “Think about things you take for granted,” she prompts. “Why not celebrate them as treasured objects?” Take, for example, Duster, which is named after the British English word for a dust cloth. “I wanted to choose words that are not necessarily fabulous or extravagant but rather everyday,” she adds.
This approach also helps her infuse a part of her very own or the brand’s history into the process. Wevet, a gentle white, is such a translucent paint that it evokes a spider’s web. In Dorset, the Southwest British town where Farrow & Ball is still headquartered, the colloquial saying for a spider’s web is none other than “wevet.” Plummet, an industrial gray with a romantic touch, is named after the small lead bit which was once hanging off of the lure that Studholme’s mother used while fishing in an Oxford morning. “I looked at it and realized that was the exact color I wanted to create,” she remembers. It was also not uncommon for the curator to sit with her kids when they were little to hear their thoughts on what they saw in a certain color: “There were occasions where they came up with extraordinary ideas.”
Individuality, in fact, is a trait Studholme recommends as a crucial element in coloring any interior. “Think of an essential navy suit,” she says. “You might want to add an exciting touch with a fuchsia lining.” She suggests a similar approach for painting inside the cabinets or powder rooms, where visual surprise can yield a long-lasting impact on the soul. Delineating different purposes—such as dining nook or an office corner—within a singular room can also be solved by bold color contrasts.
Overall, play and purpose go hand-in-hand for Studholme, who soaks in all drops of life and filters them for a potential new color with an arresting name. The curator’s tip for those in search of a new shade in their surroundings is similar: “Don’t be scared to raise your hand and say ‘I am my own individual’ with your color choices.”