Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back to Art
Supply Insiders.
My name is Jeff Morrill andtoday we're talking with Greg
Daniels, and Greg is the ownerof Gregory Daniels Fine Arts.
Greg, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm well, Jeff.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well, thanks for
coming on, and I know that you
guys distribute a brand ofbrushes called Da Vinci Brushes,
and why don't you tell us alittle bit about how you got
involved with it and in thebeginning stages of all of that?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, well, my family
has a long history in art
materials.
We started in 1924 in New YorkCity and eventually we made our
way out to Los Angeles and wehad an art supply store My
grandfather had called HGDaniels Company and we were
there until 1996.
So he was in the art materialsbusiness about 75 years, and
(01:05):
then my father and then myself.
So I decided I did not want tobe in the retail side of the
business and in 1998 I startedworking with Da Vinci Brushes
because I really thought theywere the best brushes in the
world In our store.
Growing up, i love sellingbrushes and I love selling oil
(01:28):
paint.
Those are my two favoritethings.
So at the time we startedimporting the brushes with a
very famous art supply store inNew York City called New York
Central Art Supply.
We're old friends of ours andwe would bring over the Da Vinci
Brush Shipments and we'd splitthem and half would come to Los
Angeles and half would stay inManhattan.
(01:48):
The brushes were incredible andthe selection amazed me.
I started looking at the catalogand it was this enormous
selection of brushes, familyowned, and I was very intrigued.
So I met the owners while I wasstill a retailer and in 1997 I
(02:13):
wrote them a letter to becometheir importer and shortly
thereafter I started workingwith them and worked with them
up until 2001 and then in 2001 Ibecame the sole importer from
North America so for the US andCanada of Da Vinci Brushes.
So I'm responsible for all thesales and marketing and just
(02:34):
kind of steering the brand inNorth America, and it's a
wonderful company to work with.
They're family owned, theDeffit family and now the Meyer
families as well.
So I'll just tell you a littlebit about the history.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Sure, please do.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, yeah, da Vinci
started in 1890 and the same
family, the Deffit family, isstill operating, owning and
operating the company andthey're in Nuremberg, germany.
Nuremberg's very interesting,and you have Faber-Castell and
Lyra Pencils and Schwann-Stabiloand Stadler.
You have all these art supplycompanies that are in American
(03:16):
art supply stores from that onetown.
It was a crossroads tradingtown, so they had a lot of
pencil makers and a lot of brushcompanies.
So Da Vinci, their whole goalhas always been kind of quality
over quantity.
They really focused on justmaking the highest quality
(03:41):
brushes they can, both forprofessional artists, the
inspired amateur, and forstudents.
We've made great strides, whichI'll talk about later, in that
area.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
The Da Vinci brush
line has been known as one of
the finest brush lines out there, and I know that they make a
lot of different series ofbrushes.
What would you say are the toptwo or three most popular series
of brushes that they make, andwhy are they so popular?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
They make very unique
synthetic brushes.
It's the largest selection ofbrushes in the world made by any
manufacturer.
We're really one of the onlyfactories left where we make
every product and nothing isoutsourced.
So everything's made in ourfactory, from the raw material,
(04:40):
the finished product.
So that's kind of unique in artsupplies today.
They started making thesereally unique synthetic brushes
in the 1970s and 80s and that'scontinued.
So they've been very innovativein synthetic brush making.
So what they started doing wasthey started blending different
thicknesses of fibers together.
They first came out with abrush called the Nova and then
(05:03):
later on the Cosmotops bin andthe Topacryl and these brushes,
you know they take multipledifferent fibers and thicknesses
at varying lengths.
So they're still handmade andthey're blending different
thicknesses together.
So they invented what's calledthe multidiometer synthetic.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So before that Wait,
wait, wait The multidiometer
synthetic.
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
So DaVinci was the
first factory with synthetic
brush making to take differentthicknesses of synthetic fibers.
First it was three differentthicknesses with the Nova line,
and then they came out with fivedifferent thicknesses with the
Topacryl and the Cosmotops spinline.
And what they did that wasnobody had done before was they
(05:53):
took different thicknesses ofthe fiber and blended them
together in one brush.
So you have five differentthicknesses of the fiber.
The thickest are on the outsideand the thinnest are in the
inside, and that created what'scalled capillary action, so
water or color will move betweenthe different thicknesses and
(06:15):
different thicknesses of fibers.
So they'll hold water forwatercolor or hold paint and
they'll distribute it moreevenly.
Before that synthetic brusheswere just kind of mediocre
because when you just have onediameter, the paint and the
water just kind of didn't haveanything to grab onto or hold
(06:37):
onto.
So by creating this way ofdoing synthetics which they keep
very secret, these blends thatthey've done, they really makes
our synthetics different.
They're also not buying thesame fibers as other
manufacturers.
They're developing fibers withthe synthetic brush, the people
(07:00):
who make the actual fibers.
So they're unique to them.
So you won't find the fibers weuse in other brands of brushes.
Our synthetics are completelyunique.
Yeah, and then later they tookthat a step further, about 10
years ago with a brush linecalled the Casanel for
watercolor and Grigio for oil,where they started using crimped
(07:25):
or crimped fiber.
So it's what we call the newwave synthetics.
They're wavy fiber synthetics,so those again just were able to
hold even more water and reallyreplicate.
So we're getting closer andcloser with these synthetics to
replicating an actual naturalhair brush, which has been the
(07:45):
goal And also we started.
We also started shaping thesynthetic brushes as much as we
could like natural hair, butsometimes we found it beneficial
to change that a little bit sothat the shaping of the brushes
is also very unique so thatmaximize the benefits when
you're using synthetic brushes.
(08:07):
Now, at this time a lot ofmanufacturers were making a
blends, so they're making.
You know you might have 50%sable or 50% synthetic And we
never did that.
We just either believed a brushshould be natural hair to get
all benefits of natural hairbrush making, or because we were
(08:27):
making these unique syntheticsall synthetic.
We only have one line ofbrushes where we do some
blending.
But yeah, these crimped fiberswere the next wave and it's
really kind of modern syntheticbrush making that I don't think
anybody else is doing.
We also for the for all of oursynthetic brush making we build.
(08:51):
It's done by hand, but we alsobuild our own machines.
So we have machines forsynthetic brush making that
nobody else has.
Da Vinci has a full machineshop in the basement of the
factory.
So all the machine, all theparts.
We actually make the parts inthe factory as well.
So that's kind of the topsecret area of the factory
because we obviously don't wantour competitors knowing what
(09:13):
we're doing here.
And then this year we didsomething.
We came out with a brush calledthe ColoNail And that's a
synthetic Kalinsky brush whichwe've been working on for about
five years.
So that was the first brushthat blends the wavy fiber with
straight fibers in fivedifferent thicknesses.
(09:33):
So this is the brush.
We think that mimics Kalinskysable better than any other
brush.
The Casano was a hugebreakthrough for us with the
wavy fiber.
It's kind of.
A lot of people use the termfaux squirrel.
We don't really use that term.
We think it's a different fiber, a better brush.
But that brush was a hugebreakthrough.
(09:54):
Artists loved it And especiallythe quill brushes, which is an
old fashioned kind of brushhugely popular with the urban
sketching movement, which haskind of come out of nowhere the
last decade, and there aregroups all over the world using
our Casano brushes And they'revery unique.
(10:16):
So, while we have this hugerange of kind of the traditional
natural hair brushes, theinnovations we've made in
synthetic brushmaking have beenspectacular And I think we've
really led the way in that AndI've had.
We have this big trade show inFrankfurt every year where the
(10:37):
art supply manufacturers allcome together from all over the
world And I've had other brushmanufacturers from China, india,
sri Lanka, who make a lot ofthe brushes you find in the art
supply stores these days.
Tell me, we can't knock offyour synthetic brushes, we don't
know how you do it.
So that's a bit reassuring Andyou know I think it's important
(11:03):
as an artist when you walk intoan art supply store to There's
been so much consolidation inour industry of brands, buying
other brands, and you don'treally know who's making what,
where it's being made, andyou're always going to get a
higher quality product.
If you look at that, you knowyou look at a brand like Da
Vinci, or you look at gamblingfor oil paints, or golden for
(11:27):
acrylics or you know any brandslike those where you know they
are making the products.
I think that's really important.
A you're also supporting familyowned independent businesses,
which is a good thing, but Ithink it's important just to
kind of do a little bit ofresearch and see is that company
(11:47):
making that product?
because I'm going to tell you,90% of the brushes that are in
art supply stores Are made inIndia, china, sri Lanka, and
they have somebody's namestamped on them.
So these brands are notactually actually any brushes,
they're just being made for them, and what that's led to is kind
(12:07):
of a very generic selection ofbrushes where before that, you
know, 4050 years ago, you hadall these different brands
making brushes and they were allcompeting against each other to
make the best brush they could.
So it kind of kept pushing thebar like making the brushes
better and better and better.
But then larger companies camein and bought these companies
(12:31):
and you have one, onemanufacturer in India who makes,
i would say, 75% of the brushesin an art supply store.
You walk into these days andart, yeah, and are the brushes
great?
Hey, but you know, as an artsupply importer, as an art
(12:51):
supply manufacturer and theretailer.
You know the retailer.
What they for their success?
When somebody's just starting topaint, they want to give the
artist a great brush to use,because if they buy something
not well made, that's, you know,maybe cut corners, it's not.
(13:12):
It's not going to give them agreat experience and I might
turn them off to painting Where,if you buy something that makes
the job, the painting, easier,you can watch an online video on
.
The brush performs beautifullyand it lasts its shape And a lot
of care has gone into making itThey're just going to have a
better experience and hopefullythey're going to keep painting.
(13:33):
So that's kind of that's ouroverall job.
I mean, if you're building ahouse, you wouldn't want to buy
the cheapest hammer you couldbecause that would be very
frustrating experience.
So we're trying to feel Yeah,we feel it's kind of the same
analogy with with brushes andgetting people to paint and
(13:55):
really enjoy painting with agood tool.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
So let me jump in and
let's just assume for a moment
and let's go into differentthings here.
If someone was just startingout in acrylics which of the
what, what two brush lines wouldyou suggest they start with?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Well, for acrylics we
have the classic line we have
is called the top acrylic Andthis is synthetic line.
That's the five diametersynthetic.
That's our best seller in NorthAmerica overall.
So long handled brushesGenerally, you know, we say the
short handle brushes arewatercolor gouache and the long
handled brushes are oil andacrylic.
(14:37):
Now artists break those rulesall the time.
Oh yeah, we have the.
We have the Cosmotop spin lineand short handle which many
acrylic painters use, but theshaping is a little different.
So for the long hammer brusheswe will shape the brushes so
they're more inherent topainting with oil or acrylic.
So we have the top acrylic whichhas really a lot of a snap.
(14:59):
It's got the five diametersynthetics I was talking about
earlier.
The way it's constructed isvery unique And we make that
brush course and round brightfilbert slant a fan.
So the next brush after the topacrylic we have for acrylic
painters is the Grecio.
This is the crimped fibersynthetic brush we've made It'll
(15:23):
mark the paint layers a littlebit more like a traditional hog
bristle brush, has a little bitdifferent feel from the top of
curl.
We also make a brush called theimpasto And this is the
thickest fiber, the most ruggedbrush, we make the absolute
stiffest.
Some people say it feels like aflexible painting knife.
So a lot of times when acrylicpainters come in and they say,
(15:46):
oh, i'm so hard on my brushes, ijust thrashed, you know, this
is the super rugged brush, theimpasto.
And then we make a wide range ofMottlers, which are extra wide
brushes, you know, for anywherefrom one inch up to 20 inches in
the top of curl Line, cosmotop,a Mottler.
Yeah, that's a specialty ofours.
If you Google Da Vinci Mottlersand a lot of acrylic painters
(16:09):
just absolutely love thesebrushes and buy them, buy them
all up.
I've had Mark Golden tell memany times that the series 5040
top acrylic Mottler is hisfavorite Da Vinci brush, which
is very nice.
And yeah, we have a huge, ahuge range of acrylic painting
brushes.
So those are just.
(16:31):
Those are just a few.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Let's jump over into
the watercolors.
What watercolor brushes wouldyou recommend?
Let's say that they'rebeginners, or they've been
painting for a little while andjust want to have something
that's going to perform betterfor them.
Which range of watercolorbrushes, jeff We?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
make natural air
brushes And in those the most
popular are the classic Kalinskysable brushes.
Kalinsky sable brushes we stillhave a huge range of those in
every shape you can imagineround, flats, liners, sign
painting.
We make the whole brushes inKalinsky sable.
We also make the classicsquirrel brushes which are a
(17:12):
little softer.
A lot of people use them.
They call them mops or washbrushes And that line is called
the petite gris per the squirrelbrushes.
We also make a brush linecalled the Cosmetop Mix and this
kind of combines the sable andsquirrel.
This is the only blend we make.
It has a little bit ofsynthetic in it So you can buy
(17:33):
the bigger sizes for a lowerprice.
So if you wanted to buy aKalinsky sable number 12 and
it's just too expensive, youcould buy the Cosmetop Mix in
the number 12.
And we have a lot of watercolorpainters that are flower
painters that love this brushbecause they can buy a size 12
or a 16 or a 20 or even a 30.
Huge brush And those are verypopular with watercolorists.
(17:58):
Moving on to synthetic brushesfor watercolor we make the
Cosmetop Spin.
This has been our traditionalbestseller.
It's a five diameter synthetic.
It's the first one we made.
The Mottler wash brush isincredibly popular And we have
all the shapes you know round,flat liners And this is kind of,
(18:19):
you know, a good entry levelwatercolor brush.
It's not too expensive but it'sstill kind of a professional
watercolor brush.
It's going to give you greatresults.
Then 10 years ago we made abrush called the Casanel.
This is more like an imitationsquirrel brush.
It's the first crimped fibersynthetic.
So that was a new technology wecame up with.
(18:41):
It holds a ton of water.
We sell a lot of quill brushesin this line And if you told me
10 years ago a quill brush withthe copper wire longer length is
going to be one of the bestselling brush I have, overall, i
would have said there's no waythat's possible.
But the online classes, youtube, so many ways for artists to
(19:04):
see how to use the brushes.
Now they're no longerintimidated by the quills.
And in the Casanel line we sawa huge amount of quills, huge
amount of travel brushes to theurban sketching community people
who are going out and sketchingtogether all over the United
States, all over the worldreally, which has been
incredible.
(19:25):
And then the last line we'velaunched recently in synthetics
called ColoNail.
This is a line we've worked onfor a long time.
It's synthetic Kalinsky, sotrying to mimic Kalinsky sable.
It's the first brush that we'vecombined the crimped fiber and
the straight fiber together.
We had never done that beforeAnd we really.
It has a beautiful handle.
We really think we've come upwith something special and it's
(19:47):
been out just since thebeginning of 2023.
And we already have it, i think, in 300 stores worldwide, all
over the world.
It's been an enormous hit.
But this is also because peoplehad such success with the
previous launch of the Casanelthat I talked about previously
(20:09):
that the dealers had a lot offaith that this next that brush
was so successful that thedealers fed a lot of faith the
art supply retailers.
I should say that this is goingto be a great brush too.
So many of them bought it justafter hearing about it via the
website or email, and you canlook at all these brushes up at
(20:31):
DaVinci-Defit.
That's the name of the familythat owns the company
DaVinci-Defitcom.
We have a brand new website.
You can follow us at DaVincibrushes North America.
That's my Instagram feed, andwe also have on your phone.
We have a DaVinci app whichshows you all the brushes.
(20:52):
We have a one minute video forevery brush we make so you can
see how the brush is used.
So we call them demo clips andthey've been great because
they're not too long.
We have longer videos.
We're going to get to see thewhole factory.
It's a brush tour of thefactory.
We learn a lot about brushmaking.
But really for each series wejust have one of these 45 second
(21:15):
to one minute videos to showyou how to use the brush.
So you can see all those on theDaVinci phone app, which you
can get on any of the platforms,and it shows you literally
everything The measurements ofthe brushes, anything you'd want
to know about a brush you'reusing is on there And that's
been great for artists andpeople who work in art supply
(21:37):
stores love that because thenthey can customer as a question.
They can literally just look onthe app, look on an iPad and
learn all about that particularbrush.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So if our audience
wants to see if there is a store
around them, can they go toyour website And see what stores
in their local area carry yourbrushes?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Again on that website
I just mentioned
DaVinci-defitcom Any brush youlook at, there's a where to buy
link.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
When I was looking
through your website, i noticed
some very unique brushes that Idon't think many of our artists
or our audience out there haveseen, and I want to just ask you
about a couple of them.
One was called a pipeovergrainer.
What the heck's a pipeovergrainer?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, i just did an
event for the Society of
Decorative Painters And in SanFrancisco it's called the Salon
and they do it all over theworld in a different city every
year, and these are people whoare doing very unique kind of
faux finishing.
They're doing marblingtechniques, so creating kind of
imitation marble.
(22:55):
They're also using it for somestriping techniques,
woodgrainings, making woodgrain,and we still make all of these
brushes.
So I mean, this is a categorythat's kind of you know we have
a lot of niches.
You'll find in our catalog.
You'll see these pipeovergrainers for, like I said,
woodgraining, faux marble.
We also have a full range ofsign painting brushes.
(23:15):
We have dagger striping brushesfor pin striping, we have faux
finishing brushes, we havegilding brushes, gold leaf
brushes.
So we make all of these brushesthat really nobody else makes
anymore And that kind of goestowards the whole Da Vinci
mantra of quality over quantity.
(23:38):
So we still have artists thatyou know or artisans that want
these kind of brushes.
We have them for them And youknow, artists just love us for
this.
I mean, we just came out with anew print catalog.
We have a great website thatI've mentioned, but you know
anybody can email me at Greg, atGregDanielscom, and if they'd
like a new print catalog.
(23:59):
We have a beautiful new printcatalog we can send them to,
which is a bit old fashioned,but it seems like people love
getting the print catalog.
It's been a big hit.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I also saw that there
was a pastel brush.
What is a?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
pastel brush.
That's just a blending brush.
These are kind of items whenyou see them in our catalog.
Generally somebody's come to usand said, can you make us a
brush for this?
So they've come to us and theywanted a blending brush for
pastels.
We've actually now got two orthree of them And these brushes
(24:34):
are all made by artists orquests And then generally if
we've made them we'll put themin the catalog.
I mean it's another reason wemake almost all of our series.
Jeff, we'll make some brushesfrom size, you know, 20-ot, the
tiniest, tiniest, tiniest up to50.
So we have from the smallest tothe largest in our Mottlers.
(24:58):
We make brushes from one inchup to 20 inches wide.
I mean nobody's really makingthese brushes anymore For oil
painters.
I mean we make a lot of oilpainting brushes.
We have our classic interlockedHog Bristle brush which is
beautiful, quality, called theMaestro II.
(25:18):
You know, and when you thinkabout Hog Bristle you're
thinking Van Gogh is the classic.
You know Hog Bristle, user,where you're seeing all the
strokes and the painting LucianFreud, the big figurative nudes.
You know, if you see all thosebrush strokes in there, that's
all Hog Bristle.
We make the classic Kalinskyoil painting brush for detail.
(25:40):
And you know blending We make abeautiful line old-fashioned
style brush called the BlackSable That one will give you.
It'll mark the paint like abristle brush, but a little bit
smoother.
You can do fine blending.
Portrait painters love it,realist painters.
So you know we have.
I talked a little bit about thesynthetics, but we have a huge
line of natural hair paintingbrushes, both for watercolor
(26:03):
gouache oil.
We have ox hair brushes for inItaly they're super popular for
tempera painting and frescopainting.
So you name it, you name it, wehave it, you know, and the
encourage artists to go check itout on the website.
And because it's really that'swhat first drew me to the brand
was I just found it was excitingthat somebody was still making
(26:25):
all of these brushes.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Because, often.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
You know, in the past
, for instance, there's a
classic example.
You know I mean, Jeff, i knowyou were in the arts play
industry and you know one timethere was this huge catalog of
American brushes calledGrumbacher And if you had the
Grumbacher catalog it had every,every brush you could possibly
imagine.
And then they were bought bythe Sharpie marker company in
the 1980s And they eliminatedabout 70% of the line because
(26:51):
maybe those didn't sell.
They just kept the top 30%.
So the you know, this hugerange of brushes just
disappeared literally in a yearAnd unfortunately that's what's
happened with a lot of thecompanies that get sold in the
arts play industry.
You know, you start looking atpeople who don't know much about
art supplies.
They're looking on aspreadsheet.
They see these are the top 20sellers, these are the bottom 80
(27:14):
sellers, and they keep the top20, eliminate the bottom 80.
And you have a lot of beautifulproducts that just get
eliminated based on salesfigures, not really on what does
the artist need, what does theartist want and who are these
specialists that are usingcertain brushes that really rely
(27:36):
on them?
I mean, davinci also has alittle motto called we are the
specialist for the specialists.
So we have a lot of people thatare doing specialty painting
techniques that really rely onus for these kind of brushes.
We don't wanna let them down.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
DaVinci Brush has
been around for a hundred years
and we're kinda coming to theend of our time here, but we
could talk brushes probably fortwo hours with the amount of
brushes that DaVinci offers.
And it doesn't matter if you'rea beginner you're in the middle
(28:18):
of it or of your art quest, orif you are a fine artist or a
fine crafter.
Davinci has the brush for allof them right, they do.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And just in closing,
i wanna say one other thing is
we go to great lengths also.
They built a new factory in2006, a second new factory in
2013, and these factories werebuilt with complete green
ecology, green manufacturing,non-polluting.
They're built on the city gridin Nuremberg, so there's no
(28:50):
pollution, they're completely upto compliance and all of our
brush handles, for instance, arealso from sustainable forests
in the Baltic states, mostlyLithuania and from sustainable
European forestry.
So we're really trying to doeverything we can to be eco,
(29:13):
green manufacturing and to be assustainable as possible, which
is absolutely.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
These are absolutely
important topics for the world
we live in these days, wow well,greg, you've given our audience
so much incredible informationand again give them the website
address if they wanna go and seethese wonderful products
wwwDaVinci-Deffitcom.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
That's the family
that is the owners of DaVinci,
and you can find InstagramDaVinci brushes North America.
If you have any questions, youcan email me, greg at
GregDanielscom about any brushquestions you have and, like I
said, we have a new printcatalog.
Greg, thank you again for beingon the show today, jeff having
(30:05):
me, it was nice to see you againafter all these years.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Thank you.
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