Transcriber’s Notes:
1) Table of contents/index at end as in original.
2) (TN: --) in text = comments added by Transcriber.
Color Value
By C. R. CLIFFORD
Published by CLIFFORD & LAWTON
373 Fourth Avenue, New York
Copyrighted, 1907
By Clifford & Lawton
———
Fourth Edition
grolier craft press, inc., n. y.
FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS
LIGHT, COLOR, FORM, PROPORTION
AND DIMENSIONS
Whatever is good in interior decoration is the result of consistentrelationship between Light, Color, Form, Proportion and Dimensions. Thechoice of Color should be guided by the conditions of Light. The beautyof Form and the symmetry of Proportion can exist only by a balance withDimensions.
Therefore, apart from any knowledge of historic or period decoration,effective or successful work must observe the technical laws governingconditions.
LIGHT
1. The white light of the sun is compounded of an almost innumerablenumber of color elements, as shown by the phenomena of the rainbow or byexperimenting with the prism. (See ¶ 7.)When a ray of sunshine passesthrough a glass prism it is decomposed or separated, and if theprismatic colors[Pg 4]are received upon a white screen you will find on thespectrum among the colors generated a pure blue, a pure red and a pureyellow. These are the primary colors, and it is necessary when thinkingcolor to bear these prismatic colors in mind as standards.
2. Color is an internal sensation originating in the excitation of theoptic nerve by a wave action which we call light.
3. The theory of light, the wave theory, is based upon the assumptionthat throughout all space there is an infinitely thin medium calledether. Scientists differ as to what this may be, but its movementsconstitute light, a reflection from a luminous body.
4. Everything which we see is visible because it either emits light,like a flame, or reflects light.
5. A piece of black cloth upon a white plate reflects but a smallproportion of the light. The plate reflects a large proportion. A pieceof black velvet reflects less light than black cloth and gives theeffect of absolute blackness, or an empty and dark space.
6. In practical demonstrations the study of color will be confusingunless it is understood at the outstart that pure prismatic colors canseldom be found in manufactured pigments, hence any demonstration of thetheory of color composition is usually