Color mixing guide: For artists, painters, decorators, printing pressmen, show card writers, sign painters, color mixers. Gives color mixtures by parts

In Short

Published in 1923, this practical studio manual serves as an exhaustive reference for craftspeople who mix pigments by hand. Compiled by John L. King, the text bridges physical science and trade secrets, explaining how light vibrations produce visible hues before providing step-by-step ratios for thousands of custom mixtures. It outlines how painters, pressmen, and decorators match colors, maintain materials, and troubleshoot daily workshop tasks. It survives as a dense, fascinating artifact of early twentieth-century trade knowledge, capturing a moment when commercial art relied on raw mineral pigments, chemical solvents, and precise manual skill.

The Story

The book opens with a foundational explanation of physical optics. Color is not an inherent property of objects, but an effect caused by light rays vibrating from the sun and striking the eye's retina. Standard colors are derived directly from the rainbow or spectrum because pure light never changes. However, when working with physical pigments, the foundational palette narrows to three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. From these three, along with black and white, an artisan can produce roughly three thousand distinct shades and hues. King establishes basic rules of color balance, categorizing hues into warm and cold, and laying out the principles of complementaries, where equal values creates harmony and excessive red creates visual irritation.

From theoretical physics, the text moves rapidly into the practicalities of the workshop. Pigments are divided into organic and inorganic compounds, bound by specific mordants depending on whether they will become oil paints or printing inks. King emphasizes careful material selection, urging tradesmen to buy from reliable dealers. To assist in color selection, the author directs readers to nature's inherent balance, pointing to the delicate gradients of flowers, the iridescent plumage of ravens, and the somber tones of mountain landscapes.

The middle section shifts into an extensive alphabetical dictionary of pigments and raw materials. King defines the origins and working properties of dozens of substances, from classic earth ochres like Raw Sienna to exotic compounds like Indian Yellow, historically derived from camel urine, or Mummy Yellow, extracted from mummified human remains. He highlights the rise of coal-tar derivatives like aniline, mauve, and alizarin, which offer modern substitutes for volatile or expensive natural dyes.

Following the definitions, the book presents its primary core: hundreds of exact mixing formulas organized by proportion. King supplies detailed receipts for trade-specific colors like Bottle Green, Coffee Brown, and Royal Blue, alongside precise tint ratios for grays, reds, and browns.

The final movement turns to applied trade knowledge and troubleshooting. King addresses house painters, sign writers, and printing pressmen directly. He provides instructions for preparing new timber with fillers, mixing lead and zinc to prevent paint from chalking, and preventing "alligatoring" caused by drying errors. He details studio techniques like marbling paper in water basins and applying spatter work through sieves with toothbrushes. The manual concludes with a varied collection of workshop recipes, teaching the reader how to bleach tallow, prepare weatherproof limewash, clean yellowed ivory piano keys, and mix padding glue that remains flexible without cracking.

How It Unfolds

The science of light The author defines color as a sensory response to light vibrations, establishing yellow, red, and blue as the primary physical pigments from which all secondary and tertiary shades derive.

Nature and harmony The text outlines how complementary colors balance one another, using natural subjects like bird feathers and flower petals to demonstrate how subtle tones prevent visual irritation.

The dictionary of pigments A comprehensive glossary outlines the origin, transparency, and chemical nature of standard pigments, contrasting ancient mineral earths with modern synthetic coal-tar dyes.

The master proportions Pages of exact recipes list numerical parts for mixing custom shades, giving artists precise ratios to produce everything from Slate and Terracotta to delicate flesh tints.

Trade secrets and shop practices The focus shifts to physical application, detailing how pressmen manage transparent inks on colored stock and how painters prepare stucco, wood, and glass surfaces.

Studio recipes and remedies The book concludes with practical trade formulas, offering solutions for removing ink stains, retarding plaster setting times, restoring leather, and cleaning soot from ceilings.

The People

Because this text is a practical instruction manual rather than a narrative, its central figures are the raw pigments themselves, each possessing distinct characteristics, behaviors, and physical limitations that the craftsman must learn to master.

• Lead and Zinc: The foundational white bases of the trade. Lead provides necessary opacity and body but discolors easily and chalks off when exposed to the elements. Zinc offers a more durable, non-yellowing metal base that retains its bright whiteness and holds larger quantities of linseed oil, giving life to outdoor paint.
• Prussian Blue: A deep, transparent pigment of German origin with a greenish undertone. Highly versatile for covering power, it must be carefully managed; its greenish cast often requires neutralization with a touch of crimson lake.
• Indian Red: An earth pigment originating from Bengal, ranging from bright red to dark purple-red. Highly reliable when mixed with most pigments, it behaves aggressively when brought into contact with genuine indigo, causing both colors to fade into a rust-like hue.
• Aniline and Coal-Tar Derivatives: The modern chemical newcomers of the early twentieth century. Products like mauve, magenta, and alizarin offer brilliant, inexpensive alternatives to plant and animal dyes, though some remain notoriously fugitive under strong light.

In Its Own Voice

"Science teaches us that light is a form of intense vibration which reaches the earth direct from the sun." — King introduces the wave theory of light to ground the practical craft of paint mixing in physical optics.

"Any subject that has been ill-treated with too much red, or colors which do not harmonize, form a combination that irritates." — The text warns craftsmen that poor color selection causes physical discomfort to the viewer.

"The ancients obtained a dark yellow pigment by grinding mummified human bodies." — A brief entry in the pigment glossary matter-of-factly notes the unusual historical origin of Mummy Yellow.

What It's Really About

Beneath its lists of formulas, the book presents an argument for material literacy. It posits that successful craftsmanship requires a thorough understanding of physics, chemistry, and raw materials. Color is not merely an aesthetic choice; it is a physical layer of ground earth, charred bone, or metallic oxide bound in oil or varnish. The text explores how raw materials interact with light, surface textures, and environmental stress. By standardizing mixtures into numerical parts, King seeks to remove guesswork from the workshop, turning unpredictable manual craft into a precise, reproducible science that saves time and prevents wasted material.

Why Read It Today

This guide appeals to printmakers, historical restorers, fine artists, and material historians interested in early twentieth-century trade practices. Reading it feels like stepping directly into a working 1920s sign shop or printing studio, surrounded by turpentine, dry mineral powders, and heavy cast-iron presses. The prose is clean, direct, and unpretentious, delivering information through clear lists and terse declarative instructions.

The primary difficulty for modern readers lies in its structure; the book is entirely non-narrative, functioning as an encyclopedic reference rather than a continuous argument. Furthermore, many listed ingredients—such as white lead, benzol, or whale ambergris—are now recognized as toxic, environmentally hazardous, or entirely obsolete. Yet what stays with the reader is a deep appreciation for the technical rigor of historic trades. Before industrial standardization pre-mixed every shade in a factory tube, a painter or pressman had to be part physicist, part chemist, and part artist, calculating exact ratios by hand to bring color to the world.