British Businessman Takes On Art Mission To Preserve Watercolor Pieces
The Marandi Foundation, founded by Javad Marandi and Narmina Marandi, is committed to supporting education, arts and culture, and the mental health of people living in less than fortunate communities. Javad Marandi is passionate about helping a number of communities and charities.
The foundation is generous in its donations to multiple different charities and organizations, one of which being Watercolor World.
Watercolor World is a charity that allows everyone to access their library of digitalized watercolor paintings. They specialize in watercolors created before the 1900s that would otherwise not be available for viewing.
Javad Marandi is both a co-founder and the chairman of Watercolor World’s advisory board, and he is very passionate about preserving as many watercolor pieces as possible. Let’s take a look into how the paintings are being preserved and why it’s so important.
Watercolors are Incredibly Fragile
Watercolor paintings are beautiful and amazing to look at, but the fragile nature of them makes it very difficult for the public to view them in person. Many people don’t realize how careful you need to be around watercolors – the wrong conditions could ruin the piece of artwork.
Direct sunlight is a watercolor painting’s worst enemy. Exposure to bright light can fade the colors and wash out the painting. Even indirect light can damage the painting after a certain period of time. The light may also ruin the paper and make it brittle, increasing the chances of it ripping as it’s being handled.
Moreover, the paper could become discolored easily with sunlight. For this reason, many watercolors are hidden away and never seen by many people, which is such a shame when you think about the sheer beauty that watercolors hold.
Watercolors Are Worth Saving
If you’ve ever seen a watercolor painting, you’ll know that they offer some of the most insight into our history. There are landscapes of how areas used to look before the 1900s, portraits of historical figures, and images of items that we no longer use or create.
Watercolors give an intriguing look back into the wonderful history of the world when cameras weren’t available. Many history books include pieces of information that have been passed down through the years, but not many of them touch upon the simple details that watercolors can provide us with.
Watercolors are an excellent learning resource, and because they’re not available for general viewing, Watercolor World has opened up a portal of education for anyone to look at. Digitalizing these pieces of artwork is something that is essential for us to keep ahold of our history and take advantage of being able to view it whenever we please.
Once a watercolor painting is destroyed, broken, or damaged there is no way of getting it back – these paintings are one of a kind and therefore there is no way of getting the image restored. It’s more than likely that the damaged watercolors were housing some hidden gems of the past, and now we’ll never be able to explore them and enjoy the painting.
For this reason, it’s vitally important that watercolor paintings should be preserved as far as possible – and that is exactly what Javad Marandi aims to do with Watercolor World.
How Does Watercolor World Do It?
Watercolor World is in partnership with a Fujitsu Company, PFU, and digitalizes watercolors from all over the world to store in one online database, free of charge to anyone who wants to enrich themselves within the culture of history.
Their team travels to people who have watercolor collections in their homes and brings their scanner, the ScanShop SV600, with them. This prevents the watercolor from having to be exposed to the elements while being transported to the scanner.
The Watercolor World team scans all of the watercolors from the collection and asks the collector a series of questions to get as much information about the pieces as possible. They’ll also note down any markings or inscriptions on the paintings and include them on the database.
The ScanShop SV600 uses LED technology to scan the watercolors without having to come into contact with the watercolors. Moreover, the scanner can even get clear images of the painting through the glass of the frame. This is done to prevent any harm from coming into contact with the painting.
All of these images are then edited to touch up any discoloration that might have occurred during the scanning process. Once the team is happy with the images, they’re then uploaded onto the database. You can filter your search by the continent, country, collection, artist, category, and date.
Watercolor World travels everywhere to find new watercolor paintings, as there are thousands of hidden masterpieces out there just waiting to be digitalized. Watercolor World works with partner collections, private collectors, as well as open-source collections.
The database is growing every day and therefore you can’t help but click back to it to see if anything has been added that you haven’t had the opportunity to view yet.
Final Say
Javad Marandi is one of the founders and the chairman of the advisory board for Watercolor World, a charity devoted to digitalizing and saving watercolor paintings all over the world. The Marandi Foundation, which is also cofounded by Javad Marandi, is the main contributor to Watercolor World and funds all of its aims and missions.
Watercolor paintings are quickly losing their traction with the new forms of paints and artforms being founded, but we shouldn’t forget the history of watercolors.
If you look through watercolor paintings dating prior to the 1900s, you’ll be able to travel through time and see how people saw the world through older eyes. This is something that you simply can’t achieve with anything else.
Watercolor World has made it its mission to digitalize and persevere as many watercolors as possible so that we can always view and appreciate them. If you haven’t taken a digital walk through history yet, we strongly advise you to visit the Watercolor World.