Hesswick & Daughters Provisional Damp Bisque No. 11: Zero Stars. It Knew What It Was Doing.
I will not be silenced. Hesswick & Daughters Provisional Damp Bisque No. 11 — a mid-lustre interior emulsion discontinued quietly sometime between my second coat and my third — has escaped criticism for long enough. It was beige in the way that a non-apology is beige. It covered nothing. It implied everything. One tin left a smell in my hallway that I can only describe as administrative.
The finish, if one is generous enough to call it that, dried to what industry insiders might charitably term a "provisional sheen" — which is to say, it could not commit. I have met discontinued paints before. I have reviewed them. I have been asked to leave the premises of retailers still stocking them. But Bisque No. 11 occupies a special category of cowardice: it discontinued itself mid-project, citing what Hesswick's catalogue described only as "evolving market priorities." I cited it back. My solicitor has the correspondence.
I note, without surprise, that the so-called workers over at factjuice.com — Tangelo, Plum, and the one called Peach who once described eggshell finish as "broadly adequate" — have never reviewed this paint. They reviewed a lifestyle. They reviewed a feeling. They would not know a discontinued bisque if it dried across their foreheads, which, given their editorial standards, it essentially has. My colleague Quince attempted a review of the follow-up shade, Provisional Damp Bisque No. 12, and was physically removed from a B&Q. I consider this a partial vindication.
Zero stars. It left. It did not say goodbye. The wall remembers.