WORKING WITH COLOR 



"This art is so useful, and the practice of it is at the same time so enter- 

 taining, that he ventures to say, when once a lady has perfected one colour, 

 she will not rest satisfied till she has acquired a further knowledge of colours 

 in general." 



These are the words of William Tucker, author of The Family Dyer and 

 Scourer, published in 1831 (p. v), which perfectly express the purpose of the 

 discussion that follows. 



Seeing Color 



Close your eyes for a few seconds. After you open them again you will 

 realize that shutting out all light results in total absence of color. You may 

 conclude then that color perception depends upon the presence of light. 

 This fact was long recognized but not clearly understood until the 17th 

 century when Isaac Newton discovered that the "white" light of the sun 

 is a mixture of all colors. 



Newton proved this by allowing a beam of light to pass through a glass 

 prism. As the light, composed of a range of light waves of different lengths, 

 passed from air through the denser medium of the prism its components, 

 the colors of the visible spectrum, traveling at different speeds were refracted 

 or bent at different angles. Since each color had a definite wave length, each 

 was separated out at a slightly different angle, resulting in a fan-shaped 

 series of hues within the prism. Performing this experiment yourself you 

 will see that the colors are arranged in a definite order. Red with the longest 

 wave length is always followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. 

 Violet with the shortest wave length is at the opposite end of the visible 

 spectrum from red. 



It was further learned that red, green, and violet are the basic or primary 

 colors of the visible spectrum. This can be proved by directing beams 

 containing equal amounts of red, green, and violet light to one point on a 

 wall. This combination of the three primaries results in a spot of "white" 

 light. 



When daylight strikes a colored object such as a red cloth, all the various 

 wave lengths in light except the red ones are absorbed. Thus the eye, focused 



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