Experiencing art with all senses

Stockmar products create a positive impression due to the underlying educational and artistic ideas which inform their creation. Based on the principles of Waldorf School education, our paints, crayons and modelling materials are deliberately designed to appeal to the child's senses. In our technological world, 'virtual reality' often replaces genuine experience. Stockmar products are aimed at providing genuine artistic experience which develop and enhance the senses. 

Basic experiences like feeling, grasping and shaping act on the child's brain and have a positive effect on the sensory motor development. In today'sworld such a stimulus is more important than ever before. Only when children are able to register the effect of the external world on their senses can they take their stand in the world with confidence. There is a circular movement from experience of self to experience of the wider environment.
 

Stockmar products - a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art)

In order for the senses to be holistically addressed and stimulated, the materials need to be of a quality that is not just statisticallymeasurable, but is also subjectively perceptible from an experiential, 'feeling' level. The packaging, colour, scent, shape, properties, ease of handling and artistic possibilities all contribute to a total aesthetic, sense-imbued experience.

It is this enhanced, holistic quality that Stockmar products aspire towards.

Theory of Colours:
Harmonious Interplay

Many artists and philosophers have concerned themselves with the nature and effects of colour. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the first to develop a six-part colour circle which gives a graphic illustration of the relation between the colours. The three primary colours yellow, red and blue form a triangle on the circle, and between them the secondary colours emerge that result from the mixture of the adjacent colours: green from the mixture of yellow and blue, orange from yellow and red, violet from red and blue. The colours situated opposite one another offer the greatest possible colour contrast and are known as complementary colours. 

If we draw a vertical line through the circle, we find the bright, warm colours on the right and the dark, cold ones on the left. To Goethe the effect of the various colours on the soul and the spirit was particularly important. So he attributes strengthening, warming and invigorating effects to the right-hand side of the circle, while those on the left are experienced as cooling and tranquillising. 

Johannes Itten, a painter and art teacher, extended the colour circle to a circle in twelve parts, by mixing the primary and secondary colours together. So we get red-orange as the product of red and orange, or red-violet from the combination of red and violet. 

This arrangement of the colours is to be found in all Stockmar products, and it constitutes the essential basis for art teaching in Waldorf Schools. The beneficial and harmonious effect of the colour on the viewer adds to the pleasure of creative activity using Stockmar's artist's materials.