Munsell Color Chart

Hagley Library and Archives: Quantifying Color - The Munsell Color ...

I acquired my first Munsell Soil Chart during archaeology field school in upstate New York back in 2003. By matching soil samples from the layers of dirt we excavated to colors on the chart, our team could infer the composition of soils, the geological history of the site and what to reasonably expect to find lurking below our feet. Flipping through the Munsell chart, I couldn’t help reflecting on the Goethe color wheels I’d painted in grammar school art classes, with their watery hues bleeding from one tone to the next in a rainbow continuum of yellows, reds, purples and blues. The description of a soil color or the painting of a color wheel relies on a hybrid of technical production and subjective vision. Goethe contributed to color theory an element of human experience, a corporeal subjectivity that Newtonian models had previously ignored. For Goethe, the perception of color was linked directly to the subjective perception and conditions of the human eye and mind. Wittgenstein is a better judge of this than I, but Goethe, I think, was most interested in expanding optical explanations of light into the subjective observations of human observers, thinking particularly about how these phenomena can be translated into the ways we experience and describe color and light through art and science. A. E. Munsell, in his work as an oil painter and later as a color theorist and researcher, was able to connect these seemingly disparate notions in color theory in the Munsell Color System . He was interested in sight, studying, particularly, color blindness and even creating a series of crayons . part due to the efforts of research organizations in the early 20th century which, in an effort to streamline business practices and manufacturing techniques, came together to agree upon common terms with which to measure and describe color. A key moment in this process occurred with the formation of the Inter-Society Color Council in 1931. From the outset, the ISCC played an important role in unifying the measurement and control of color in America. Today, using computers and a range of high-tech optical equipment, color standards agreed upon by ISCC member bodies help manufacturers determine a host of things from the color of your Levis to the calibration of computer screens. With such broad appeal, the ISCC has attracted members from all corners of science and industry including Dupont, Hallmark Cards Inc., Hewlett Packard, Konica Minolta and Xerox.

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