A 900-Page Color Guide from 1692 Predates Pantone by Nearly Three Centuries
900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692 (With Complete High-Res Scan)
In 1692, artist A. Boogert created a single handwritten copy of a 900-page manual on watercolor mixing, now housed at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence. Over 700 pages of color swatches draw on Aristotle's system rather than Newton's spectrum, and the book likely reached few painters. Complete high-resolution scans are now available online.
In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert, describes how to make watercolour paints.
- dofm
I love stuff like this. The article mentions Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour which is a marvel. There is a wonderful Thames and Hudson book, Nature’s Palette, which includes Werner’s Nomenclature and expands on it by discussing how the nomenclature was produced, has illustrations of the reference plants and animals Werner used, etc.
It makes for a great gift for an aspiring artist interested in natural themes, I think. Particularly when paired with Taschen’s The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel which is a similarly mesmerising historical reference:
- vanderZwan
Tangent: always fun to read these old books that still have a long s and having to remind myself not to misread it as an f all the time. It gets so silly, like the authors have a bad lisp (or "bad lifp", I gueff).
(also funny that our forward slash is a descendant of it, meaning it's a "cousin" to the integral symbol)
- ulnarkressty
I highly recommend ColorNerd on Youtube for his explanations of various color spaces and color theory. It's primarily aimed at artists, but very informational.
- sidewndr46
wouldn't I need a calibrated monitor to view this? Or are modern LCD displays good enough?
- macshome
"Pre-Pantone" is underselling this by quite a bit!