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PFU partners with The Watercolour World to document paintings for the digital age Partnership enables fragile watercolours to be preserved in digital form

Yokohama, Japan, February 14, 2019 - PFU Limited, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd., the world's leading scanner manufacturer, announced that its UK-based subsidiary 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’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.

Before the camera was invented, people used watercolours to record the world around them. Although beautiful, these records of watercolours have been too fragile for display, and have over time, been hidden away as precious pieces of art and history. 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 do not 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, yet 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.

“Digitisation of historical pieces and enabling everyone to see what life was like before have been crucial not only in the EMEA region but all over the world. We are proud to be partnering with The Watercolour World and would like to continue engaging in recording history for posterity”, said PFU Limited’s Corporate Vice President & President of the Document & Imaging Business Unit, Yasunori Miyauchi.

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Website

The Watercolour World: https://www.watercolourworld.org/
PFU EMEA’s Collaboration Site: https://www.scansnapit.com/tww/
The Watercolour World Introduction Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hivfP3QLQTQ

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 140,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.

About PFU Limited

PFU Limited, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, is a $1.3 billion global enterprise that designs, develops, manufactures, and globally markets computer hardware, peripheral products, enterprise software and systems. PFU is one of the world’s leading document scanner companies which offer a broad portfolio of document scanners for personal, desktop, workgroup and high-volume production environment. PFU has been engaged in the document imaging scanner business for more than 30 years. For more information, please see https://www.pfu.fujitsu.com/en/.

About 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.
For more information, please see https://www.watercolourworld.org/.