Stuart Semple has liberated this very special Tiff Blue as a paint for all artists to use.
Tiffany Blue was created by Charles Tiffany and John Young in 1837 and is a trademarked colour that needs a license to use it. Although many corporations have trademarked colours, like T-Mobile’s Magenta or Coca Cola’s Red, what makes Tiffany Blue different is that it's trademark stops it being used across nearly a quarter of all products and services including jewellery, fragrance, leather goods, tableware, books covers, stationary ,even the colour of a shop front or a taxi cab!
As Tiffany themselves put it:
“Since 1998, Tiffany Blue® has been registered as a color trademark by Tiffany and, in 2001, was standardized as a custom color created by Pantone® exclusively for Tiffany and not publicly available. No matter the medium the color is reproduced in, Tiffany’s proprietary hue remains consistent and instantly recognizable. The Pantone® color is called “1837 Blue,” named after Tiffany’s founding year”.
Although nature made it first, Tiffany’s multi-class registration is for “a shade of blue often referred to as Robin’s Egg Blue”. Tiffany have not only restricted the way people can use the colour through Trademark but also have an exclusive deal with Pantone, who registered their colour too, in the process giving them sole access to Pantone 1837 and rendering it not available to the public until now.