About Schmincke "Meliora cogito" - "I strive for the best" Since 4 generations the traditional Schmincke-goal is making and providing the very best finest artists' colours for demanding artists. In 1881 Josef Horadam and Hermann Schmincke, affiliated through their wives, searched and found traditional resin-oil-colour recipes, almost lost during the last period before the invention of the metal tube. (Without tight containers like tubes the resin-oil-colours could not be durably kept while painting outside). At the Academy in Florence, Professor Cesare Mussini (never painting outside) still preserved old family recipes of finest natural resin-oil-colours. They became the initial and immediately successful exclusive program of the colour-manufacturing plant founded by the two chemist colour-men H. Schmincke and J. Horadam, while others continued to make the more simple oil-colours without resins as they became used to before the invention of tubes. lt took Josef Horadam 11 years after the founding of the Schmincke-factory in 1881 to research, develop and further improve "his" watercolour-line to top the watercolours, invented earlier in England. In 1892 he received his first Prussian patent for his "HORADAM Patent-Aquarellfarben", followed by patents in several other European countries like France and Hungaria. Still today MUSSINI® finest dammar-resin-oil-colours and HORADAM® AQUARELL, finest watercolours are the strongest and most renowned legs of the Schmincke program of finest artists' colours.