PFU partners with The Watercolour World to document paintings for the digital age
Partnership enables fragile watercolours to be preserved in digital form
PFU (EMEA) Limited
Hayes, UK, January 31, 2019
PFU (EMEA) Limited, a Fujitsu company, the world’s leading scanner manufacturer, today announced it has partnered with The Watercolour World to help it digitise and document paintings on to a single geographically-indexed and fully searchable library. With the help of PFU EMEA’s ScanSnap SV600, the UK based charity is creating a visual view of the world before photography, and helping to make watercolours accessible for everyone.
The Watercolour World was founded with the objective of digitising and collating public and private watercolour collections from across the world and making them available via the charity’s website. To date, the online, free to access archive, has in the region of 80,000 watercolours spanning 18,000 locations, many of which have been digitised using the ScanSnap SV600.
Designed for quick and easy image capture that delivers high-quality output, the ScanSnap SV600 can scan images through glass, meaning paintings don’t need to be removed from their frames, avoiding the risk of damage. The ScanSnap SV600 also features a light range that is powerful enough to capture the images in high detail and is within safe limits for the watercolour medium, so will not harm the delicate paint. The SV600 is also highly portable, which enables the digitisation teams to take it to collections, galleries and homes to capture the images.
Andra Fitzherbert, Chief Executive Officer of The Watercolour World said: “Watercolours are fragile, often hidden away and liable to fading. The Watercolour World was founded to document these important paintings in both public and private hands, and aggregate them on a geolocated website, before they’re lost forever. The online archive we’ve created, with the help of PFU, enables visitors to search and zoom into many documentary watercolours. Already this has helped the scientific community to identify changes in landscapes over time, and we are excited to see how the power of our digital age harnesses the information that can be found in historic watercolours.”
“Watercolours have helped to create a visual record of the world before photography, providing vital information for historians and scientists, said Mike Nelson, Senior Vice President, PFU (EMEA) Limited.
“As with all of our ScanSnap range, the SV600 was developed with the intention of helping users to transform their scanning experience and create accurate digital images. We’re proud to be partnering with The Watercolour World to help it digitise and record these paintings for posterity, enabling everyone to see what life was like before 1900 and in doing so, providing insight into how our world has changed since these original images were painted.”
Key features of the ScanSnap SV600 contactless scanner include:
- One-button overhead scanning technology
- Scans bound material and flat documents
- Scans an A3 size area in less than 3 seconds
- CCD optic with fast LED illumination within safe limits for the watercolour medium
- Book curve image-flattening technology
- Erase finger from image function
- Auto crop, de-skew and rotation features
- Auto page-turn detection sensor
- Timed interval scanning mode
- USB 2.0 connectivity
- Searchable PDF, PDF and JPEG creation
- Single scan multiple document cropping function
Websites
The Watercolour World: https://www.watercolourworld.org
ScanSnap SV600: https://www.scansnapit.com/tww
Press release: https://www.scansnapit.com
About PFU (EMEA) Limited
Information is the lifeblood of business. By making it work harder, we create the knowledge that empowers organisations to do more. We achieve this by enabling data to move seamlessly between physical and digital environments, so information becomes more usable to more people.
PFU (EMEA) Limited is a specialist company within the Fujitsu family, that’s dedicated to information management solutions. We offer advanced technology, intelligent software and consultancy services; these have made us the partner of choice for the world’s most ambitious organisations. So, whether it is document management solutions, bringing galleries online, or small format keyboards for coders, we are committed to enabling the world’s flow of knowledge.
Operating in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, PFU (EMEA) Limited is responsible for marketing and sales of Fujitsu document scanners. The European company was established in the United Kingdom in 1981 and has offices in Germany, Italy and Spain and Knowledge Suites in London, France, Dubai and Russia. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com/uk/about/local/corporate/subsidiaries/fel/
About The Watercolour World
The Watercolour World is a free, interactive website that will act as a unique gateway to a global collection of documentary watercolours made before 1900, in both public and private hands. Users can search either by via a map or by keyword with tens of thousands of images covering topography, botany, zoology, historic events and human activities and achievements of all kinds.
The Watercolour World is the brainchild of Fred Hohler, the British former diplomat who founded the Public Catalogue Foundation in 2002, which photographed and published over 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership in Britain for the first time. He is joined by Andra Fitzherbert as Chief Executive of The Watercolour World.
The Watercolour World is wholly funded by The Marandi Foundation, a London-based charity chaired by British entrepreneurs and philanthropists Javad and Narmina Marandi.
The Watercolour World is calling on members of the public to get in touch if they own any pre-1900 watercolours that they believe would be useful additions to the project. They can do so by contacting TWW via collections@watercolourworld.org.
Date: January 31, 2019
City: Hayes, UK
Company: PFU (EMEA) Limited
