Ken Bromley catalogue and its responsible warnings

I'm in one of my generous moods - they happen so rarely I should take advantage of them. I received my Ken Bromley summer catalogue the other day - should add that they're not my sole source of supply - but I was struck by the amount of good advice they give, unlike some other retailers, with their products. Just a few lines very often, but to the point and helpful. For example, they offer W & N Artists' varnish for oils, and the caption reads - "Do not use as a medium"; a general note reads "oil paintings must be thoroughly dry (at least 6 -12 months) before varnishing";and the old favourite Dammar varnish "tends to darken with ageing". Why is this so useful? Well - it astonishes me that on professional artists' web forums, and Facebook pages, people STILL ask if they can varnish their paintings earlier than 6 months; some want to varnish in a matter of weeks, or even days; and some still pronounce the virtues of Maroger medium, in its various lethal forms, because that's what they learned 40 years ago and have learned no better since - there's more than one recipe for Maroger medium, named after Jacques Maroger, who made some pretty big and mostly wrong assumptions about what the old masters used, but a common one involves the use of dammar varnish with Linseed Oil, and usually a dash of Turps. Thank goodness everyone here knows better, eh? He asked; looking around suspiciously. Art materials suppliers will generally sell you all sorts of stuff, especially to oil painters, but I have criticisms of the number of different mediums sold for acrylic and watercolour too; but it is good to find art catalogues which, if you bother to read them of course, could at least stop people asking daft questions and adopting harmful and outdated practices. In fact the only thing I have against Ken Bromley is that they sell Bob Ross products too, but there we are. You've got to make a living....

Online is better a) because you can place an order quickly without being seduced by all sorts of things you don't need, b) because there's often more information on pigment numbers, which I need before buying oil paint in particular. But there's much pleasure to be gained from leafing though a catalogue, always provided you don't allow yourself to be conned into buying everything in it - I use them to identify new products - but then I tend not to buy them. Nearly fell for that with Oilbars, until thinking 'hang on: that's going to be VERY messy'. And now I see that several suppliers have stopped offering them. A catalogue can be an inspiration, though! I've painted very little for quite a while, but the arrival of the Ken Bromley catalogue re-awakened my desire to get the easel out again. They don't have as wide a range as Jackson's, no - but you can find all sorts of things by darting swiftly between suppliers; and at least you can FIND things on the KB website. All of these companies have their place, and if I could I'd buy regularly from all of them, perhaps in rotation! We've lost so many art shops - the more intimate and friendly online stores need our support (and by the way, I've always found Jackson's friendly and helpful too).