Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18848

    Colour chart

    Date
    1686
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    Creator - Organisation
    The Royal Society, Publisher
    Object type
    Article identifier
    Material
    Technique
    Subject
    Description
    Colour chart by Richard Waller, printed with various colour swatches, colour names in Latin, Greek, French and English (where known), and details of their ingredients.

    Illustration to ‘A catalogue of simple and mixt colours, with a specimen of each colour prefix to its proper name’ in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 16, issue 179 (February 1686). In this article, Waller expresses his wish that the chart be used as a reference tool, to aid identification of the colours of leaves, bark, flowers, feathers, plants, animals etc: 'Thus to describe a Plant, it may be seen which of the Simple or Mixt Colours comes nearest to it, and then the Word affixt to that Colour may be made use of, which the Reader, if desirous, may look in his Table and find together the Pattern thereof'.

    Richard Waller (c.1646-1715) British naturalist, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1681.
    Related fellows
    Richard Waller (1660 - 1715, British) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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