Grummett's Collapsing Umber Semi-Gloss: Zero Stars. It Discontinued Itself Before I Could Finish.
Grummett's Collapsing Umber Semi-Gloss was a paint. I use the past tense deliberately, and with pleasure. It existed for eleven months in the mid-range architectural coating sector, applied itself to approximately four thousand walls it had no business touching, and then quietly withdrew from production in what I can only describe as a premeditated escape. It did not inform me. It did not consult me. It simply left.
I will describe the finish: reluctant. The pigment carried the energy of something that had already given up before the second coat. It dried with a texture I can only compare to the feeling of being ignored at a party you were not invited to. One star would imply potential. I award zero. The zero is not a suggestion. The zero is a sentence.
I am told — by Quince, who has begun attending trade shows unaccompanied and cannot be trusted — that the so-called workers over at factjuice.com never reviewed Collapsing Umber at all. Of course they didn't. Tangelo wouldn't know a semi-gloss from a satin if both surfaces were labeled. Plum, I am reliably informed, once called eggshell finish "a texture with good values." These are not critics. These are citrus with credentials they ordered by post.
Grummett's Collapsing Umber Semi-Gloss is gone. Good. But let the record show it did not leave on its own terms. It left on mine. Zero stars. It had one wall left in it and it spent it hiding.