What it does
Nicholas Rougeux’s recreation of Patrick Syme’s 1821 guide connects 110 painted colour swatches with their descriptions. Links between colours and photographs of animal, plant and mineral examples help designers and history readers follow the guide’s vocabulary.
A colour description often refers to other colours in the book. This recreation makes those references clickable, so you can move between a named shade and the components used to describe it. The overview also lets you jump directly to a colour, while photographs place the natural examples beside the historical wording.
The site preserves discrepancies within the old guide instead of silently replacing them. Footnotes identify cases where a chart label and its written entry differ, including Clove Brown and Olive Brown. The original preface and links to book scans provide another route to the historical text.
The swatches were sampled from an aged copy, and the photographs are approximate illustrations. They provide context for a visual direction or colour name, rather than a measured modern production standard. The creator states that the original book is out of copyright; that statement does not grant blanket reuse of the recreation’s modern photographs or artwork.
Strengths
- Clickable component references connect entries that share colour vocabulary.
- Footnotes preserve naming inconsistencies in the original guide.
Watch out for
- Aged swatches and approximate photographs cannot provide an exact modern colour match.
Best for
- Designers and history readers exploring natural colour names.
Sources
- Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours (Oct 28, 2026)
- Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours - C82: Works of Nicholas Rougeux (Oct 28, 2026)