Wonderful post from The Public Domain Review that displays examples of how we’ve catalogued color throughout history.
Featured below is a chronology of various attempts through the last four centuries to visually organise and make sense of colour. A wide variety of forms and methods are represented: from simple wheels to multi-layered pyramids, from scientific systems to those based on the hues of human emotion. Many of the images are directly, or indirectly, sourced from Sarah Lowengard’s excellent The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe – published electronically on Gutenberg-e in 2006 – a highly recommended read if you’re keen to find out more about the fascinating history of colour, and also background on many of the images below. Also check out Philip Ball’s Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (2003) for a great look at how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted through the ages.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!