Munsell’s Colour System
A Colour Notation and Atlas
In Munsell’s Colour System, Albert Munsell set out to make colour exact. Here, his foundational text on colour theory is paired with fifteen full-colour plates from his colour atlas.
Book Description
In Munsell’s Colour System, Albert Munsell set out to make colour exact. Here, his foundational text on colour theory is paired with fifteen full-colour plates from his colour atlas.
Munsell was a painter and teacher who was frustrated with the lack of consistency across colour science. His written work A Color Notation, first published in 1905, established a way of categorising colour by three dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (purity). These elements could be used to produce any particular colour or differentiate between those of the same character. The innovative theory offered insights into colour harmony and the relationships between certain colours, creating a way to name any colour exactly, and to describe how each stood in relation to the rest.
Munsell’s system spurred significant advancements in colour science, art, and design, and became the foundation for much of modern colour theory alongside works published by Michel Chevreul and Ogden Rood. This edition combines A Color Notation (1905) with all fifteen full-colour plates from Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915), an introduction by Munsell, and an essay on colour by Bonnie E. Snow. It is an essential colour manual for anyone studying colour theory, working with colour, or those drawn to the history of chromatics.
Publisher's Note
For the designer, the colourist, and anyone who works with colour, Munsell’s Colour System is the volume in which colour stopped being described and started being measured – ordered by hue, value, and chroma.
What drew us to Munsell was that he did something earlier colour theorists never quite managed: he made it measurable. Before him, colour lived in metaphor and hunch; after him, any shade could be named exactly and understood by anyone, anywhere. A book that turned colour from something you feel into something you can share precisely. That balance of rigour and beauty is exactly what this collection is about.
“It’s so interesting that a system built for artists and teachers ended up in the hands of soil scientists and archaeologists, and is still in use over a century later.”
— Emily, Editor
Book Features:
- The complete text of A. H. Munsell’s 1905 A Color Notation.
- All fifteen full-colour plates from the Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915).
- An original introduction by Munsell and an essay on colour by Bonnie E. Snow.
- The hue, value, and chroma system that underpins modern colour science.
- An essential reference for designers, artists, and students of colour theory.
Table of Contents:
Contents:
- A World of Colour by Bonnie E. Snow, 1920
- An Introduction to the Munsell Colour System by A. H. Munsell, 1921
- A Colour Notation by A. H. Munsell
- Chapter I. – Colour Names
- Chapter II. – Colour Qualities
- Chapter III. – Colour Mixture
- Chapter IV. – Prismatic Colours
- Chapter V. – The Pigment Colour Sphere
- Chapter VI. – Colour Notation
- Chapter VII. – Colour Harmony
- A Colour System and Course of Study Based on the Colour Solid and its Charts
- Glossary of Colour Terms
- Plates from the Atlas of the Munsell Colour System
Editorial Reviews:
“The only way to obtain an accurate knowledge of colour harmony.”—The Catholic School Journal, 1914
Extract
Color Needs a System
Music is equipped with a system by which it defines each sound in terms of its pitch, intensity, and duration, without dragging in loose allusions to the endlessly varying sounds of nature. So should color be supplied with an appropriate system, based on the hue, value, and chroma of our sensations, and not attempting to describe them by the indefinite and varying colors of natural objects. The system now to be considered portrays the three dimensions of color, and measures each by an appropriate scale. It does not rest upon the whim of an individual, but upon physical measurements made possible by special color apparatus. The results may be tested by any one who comes to the problem with a clear mind, a good eye, and a fair supply of patience.
—Albert H. Munsell, A Color Notation, 1905
More About This Work
Munsell was not the first to try to classify colour. Newton’s (1643–1727) colour wheels had arranged the spectrum in a ring, while Goethe (1749–1832) had explored its emotional and psychological effects, but neither could pin colour down precisely. Munsell’s work, set out in A Color Notation (1905), was to give every colour a measured place in three dimensions (hue, value, and chroma) so that it could be named and communicated exactly, across any discipline. Its most enduring application came in soil science. Where nineteenth-century descriptions of soil had been inconsistent and subjective, the Munsell Soil Color Charts, published in 1949, gave geologists, agronomists, and archaeologists a common standard – one still in use worldwide today.
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