Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe

Book excerpt: This book describes the international effort to give order to colours and thus facilitate communication about it, two topics deemed essential to a modernising world that were also recognizably complex. Expert essays will enhance readers' understanding of the struggle to coordinate nature with art at a time when approaches to both were undergoing rapid change. Ordering Colours shows how such seemingly trivial concerns as identifying the basic colours and disseminating appropriate colour diagrams had to meet philosophical, scientific and professional needs across Europe. Contributors detail the many schemes for colour systematization and their real-world applications; questions of concern to both academic- and manufacturing-focused investigators throughout the long 18th century. They bring together original research and new thinking about landmark early modern studies to address important developments as well as neglected historical contributions of European arts, sciences, and economies. This collection is an important addition to the libraries of all who are interested in public culture and manufacturing developments in the early modern period and is aimed at historians of art, technology, philosophy and physics.