A short-form series on historical and contemporary color wheels, and why they were built. Each episode discusses what problem a color wheel (or wheels) tried to solve, who made it, and what it gets right or wrong. We end up covering a lot of color theory ground in the process! New episodes every Wednesday.
Curated by: Color Nerd (24 videos)
In 1933, Better Homes and Gardens home furnishings editor Christine White Holbrook published an unusual 16-hue color wheel, built on five primaries: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. That's a clear signal she was using the perception-based color system developed by Albert H. Munsell. But Holbrook modified Munsell’s color wheel to be asymmetrical… and she left out orange. Why? This episode of Color Wheel Wednesday traces the answer through the Ash Can School painters Christine studied with in the 1910s, Hardesty Maratta's musical-chord system that influenced her teachers, the home economics movement of the 1920s (Laura Baldt, the Goldstein sisters), and a quietly furious act of editorial replacement: how Holbrook rewrote a condescending 1931 booklet by Harold Donaldson Eberlein into something her readers actually deserved. If you've ever wondered why the traditional red-yellow-blue color wheel doesn't quite work in interior design, this video's for you. Got a color wheel you'd like to see featured? Drop it in the comments. Bibliography: * Christine White Holbrook, Color Charts and Color Schemes (1933) * Christine White Holbrook, My Better Homes and Gardens Home Guide (1933) * Harold Donaldson Eberlein, "How to Combine Colors," Better Homes and Gardens (April 1930) * E.C. Andrews, “Color and its Applications to Printing” (1911) * Hardesty Maratta's color system, as used by Henri, Bellows, and Sloan. See an example of triangular Maratta palette notes by Sloan here: https://emuseum.delart.org/objects/9209/maratta-color-triangle-for-bleecker-street-saturday-night * Laura Baldt, Clothing for Women (1916), see also Clothing for the High School Girl (1933) * Harriet and Vetta Goldstein, Art in Everyday Life (1925)