Colour, a universal source of enjoyment, so essential an element of decorative art, has not been hitherto the subject of such investigations as to place its powers, harmonies, and discordances among matters of scientific certainty. A few traditionary dogmas have been the only guide of ordinary workmen, while success in design, as well as in the higher regions of art, has been dependent upon that rare union of faculties vaguely denoted by the indefinite, unsatisfactory term, “taste.” The arrangement of colours in manufactures of English design—since the decline of mediæval art—has commonly been condemned as notoriously arbitrary, destitute of any reference to principle, and deficient in that satisfying richness and beauty which result from harmonious combinations. Although often overcharged with colour, and of costly elaboration, our manufactures have too often proved that the designer—in ignorance of a true, infallible standard—has mistaken gaudiness for splendour, and capricious strangeness for improvement; and, for want of a better claim to popular favour, has constantly sought it by “leaning on novelty, his fickle, frail support.” The established preference of French designs was shown, by the Great Exhibition of 1851, to be, in the main, well-founded; and one of the leading causes of the perfect success of some objects was found in the fact, that they had been designed and executed in accordance with a well-defined set of principles, extensively taught in France to designers, workmen, and others. These principles it is the purpose of this book to set forth, to illustrate, and to apply to every art of which the choice and arrangement of colours is an element. The author, M. Chevreul, before the publication of this work, had gained high reputation by his researches in organic chemistry. In his “Considerations sur l’Analyse Organique,” he enunciated principles which, carried into practice in his “Recherches sur les Corps Gras d’origine animal,” opened the path which has been rendered illustrious by Liebig and others. But, being appointed Director of the Dye Works of the Gobelins, he was compelled to abandon these researches—the field in which, “having sown, he had, as it were, only to reap,”—that he might fully investigate the principles involved in the assortment of colours. M. Chevreul’s earnest attention to this inquiry was continued during ten years, with ample opportunities for investigation. For twenty-five years he has been in the habit of lecturing to workmen, artists, &c. The undisputed superiority of those French manufactures in which these instructions have been fully carried out, has evinced his success and rewarded his exertions. Aware of the important influence of such knowledge, the Chamber of Commerce of Lyons solicited and obtained from the French Government permission for M. Chevreul to lecture there to the artisans especially, to whom printed copies of the lectures were afterwards gratuitously distributed.