Insanely expensive palette boxes

These are beyond the Rolls Royce of palette boxes. Hand made of brass (so they don’t rust) and enameled for a smooth mixing surface. They cost hundreds of dollars and you have to wait months for your custom, hand made, signed and numbered box.

House of Hoffman - Steve Fanelli. Beautiful and insanely expensive. I kid you not. But I so want one. Hoffman also  offers a brass brush "vault." For that amount of money, yeah, it's a vault. For a small sketcher's box, I think I favor his design. He has developed a unique fold away thumb ring that allows you to hold your palette and journal in one hand while painting with your other. He can make them for left or right handers. I also like that all of the little parts for the Sketcher II are hinged and attached so they can't fall off or get lost, unlike the Little Brass Box Company's Travel Palette. USA

The Watercolor Paint Box Company - Craig Young. *THE* name in custom boxes. You can wait from six months to a year. I heard he has retired and his son Robert is now making the boxes. Same quality so not to worry. Boxes are brass and enameled inside and out from a selection of colors. UK

The Little Brass Box Company - John Hurtley. Exquisite. Similar to Craig Young's. I actually favor these designs over Craig Young's because of the optional flap wells and the variety of inserts. They also offer a matching brush case. For a price, of course. They have the widest range of exterior enamel colors and for an additional fee, you can customize it to any color you want. Awesome. UK

The Classic Box Company has a very limited selection but their prices are a bit more reasonable, if you consider several hundred dollars to be reasonable. They feature classic brass finishes like House of Hoffman. David Cooper.

IBA-CO - Ephraim. Out of Oakland, CA and very similar to the Craig Young and Little Brass Box company. In case you wondered why, they are all based on a traditional style created by a famous art supply company in England owned by Charles Roberson. They are sometimes referred to as Roberson boxes. I rather like his SIG box for a studio box. Brass construction and enameled outside with a variety of colors to choose from. He also offers custom colors for an additional fee, but I rather like the purple. USA

La Petite Palette - Peter Berkovski. Here's a new one I just found but the boxes are amazing. Quite beautiful and with a leather case and your name engraved for free. Classic brass finish like House of Hoffman and The Classic Box Company. Well, if you have a brass box, why not show it off? Only three are being offered for now; pocket, sketchers and studio. I quite like the studio. Looks like at some point in the future they are going to offer brushes as well. I will keep my eye on them. Bulgaria

You're looking at approximately $300 and up and up and up.

Are they worth it? Depends on who you talk to. I’ve heard two instructors say they spent prize money they have won for their paintings on these custom boxes and seem quite happy with them.
I don’t have that kind of money to splurge until I win the lottery. But I do have two brass boxes.

I have a Frazer-Price Travel Palette (looks like THIS) that I was lucky enough to pick up on eBay UK for what I consider a song, around $100 with shipping. I was really lucky as they usually go for at least double that and I've seen them listed for $400. It is a lovely little box if a bit bulky to hold in one hand, but it is self contained with a small water bottle, little containers for brush washing, plenty of mixing surfaces and space for either whole or half pans and brushes. My travel brushes do fit in there. I can put in the four primaries, plus a few extras. I might even be able to balance and still hold a journal in my left hand, freeing my right for the brush. I haven’t taken it out yet, so we shall see. I was going to take it to Yosemite but chickened out and took my Whiskey Painters and Daler Rowney instead.

Frazer-Price is still around. He is mostly retired now and paints more. While you can't get one of those 5,000 original boxes any more unless you troll eBay on a regular basis, he also designed a leather brush case that you wear on your arm (with mixed success.) You can still buy that at Jackson's Art in the UK.

I recently picked up an odd little one of a kind box. It is hand made of brass and looks very similar to the current Winsor and Newton Field Box, but it holds 15 half pans, not 12. It won’t hold a brush but the mixing surfaces are both enameled and larger. I prefer it to plastic. After it arrived and I polished it up I found some etching. One said “Sample Box”, another the name Gary Mansfield and inside Pat. Applied and a number. At one point Winsor and Newton was goingt to market the Frazier-Price box but in the end decided it was too fancy and pricey for their customers. This box looks very much like a prototype for their field box. I may never know. I sent photos and information to Winsor and Newton, heard back that it would be passed on in the company to someone who might know but since then I’ve never heard back. At any rate, I’ve “moved in” and will be taking it out for a spin.

This is the Winsor and Newton Field box. See the similarity?

If you troll eBay you can pick up some vintage boxes that can be every bit as nice as those expensive custom brass boxes. I've picked up a few, cleaned them up and repainted the insides and they're good as new for taking out for a bit of plein air. I was lucky enough to get an original Roberson

and a Binning Munro that way, plus some vintage Winsor and Newton. I prefer these metal boxes as I can put magnets on the bottom of my half and whole pans to hold them in place, yet easily switch them out to change my color palette.

Here is the mother of all palettes, a giant FOME box I purchased from Kremer Pigments, but they have been branded for others. (That's a small Winsor and Newton Bijou box on the left for comparison.) The giant FOME box is about 8 inches by 14 inches closed so quite large. I would have designed the lid with 6 mixing areas rather than three.

The giant pans in the FOME palette can hold an entire 15ml tube of Daniel Smith paint. 48 pans in total, unless I use magnets to fill the brush storage area with more pans. It is quite large but if you're using large brushes this works great. (Especially now that the wonderful large ceramic Winsor and Newton pans are discontinued. Plus they aren't very portable) If I am attending a workshop that involves very large brushes, this is what I'll take as I just don't like working with fresh paint from tubes squeezed on to a palette. But once it is filled it will weigh quite a lot. Perhaps 10 lbs or more so not what you would call portable.