Sally Woodcock completed a PhD on the artists' colourman - Charles Roberson, one of London's major suppliers of painting materials, covering the period 1820–1920. Her study highlighted issues of transition from craft to industry and hand to machine manufacture, exploring the tensions between tradition and innovation. The company's account ledgers reveal the importance of trade agreements and reciprocal arrangements, credit and bad debts, price fixing, trade secrets, codes, patents and copyright as well as offering an opportunity to survey an unusually wide range of artistic activity, both amateur and professional, in Victorian and Edwardian London.
