Founded in 1865 in Belgium by Jacques Blockx, the BLOCKX brand today is recognized by artists worldwide for the uncompromising quality of its colors. Blockx, a chemist with a passion for pigments, started his own laboratory at the urging of artist friends who were dismayed by new industrial methods of paint production. It was then that Blockx sought to recreate and preserve the time-honored techniques of paint and pigment-making that the Old Masters relied on by stone-grinding pigments and following historic recipes and processes used in the 17th and 18th centuries.

His legacy endures today in the BLOCKX brand, which still produces oil paints and pigments according to his principles, using many of the same formulas and hand processes he established over a century ago.