As the needs of conventional printers changed and the traditional colour making skills, machinery and methods began to die out, George Craine (Junior), preferring the ‘old ways’ and knowing them to be more suited to artists’ products, set up the Cranfield Group in 1976, using traditional processes to create top quality dry pigment inks.

Cranfield was born. Artists found that there were fewer and fewer artisan colour-makers around. When they realised Cranfield had the knowledge and the machinery to create dry-colour inks they flocked to them. George responded by making sure he understood exactly what these artists needed – and the rest is history.