"Boucher aux Alentours," Croome Court Tapestry Room Interior, 1758-67, installed by 1771. Designed for the Earl of Coventry by Robert Adam, the room features walls lined with tapestries and similar-looking upholstery. A novel aspect is the continuous tapestry on all four walls, in effect a pictorial wall covering rather than a framed, painting-like tapestry. The scenes in the cartouches were designed by Boucher; the tapestries woven in Jacques Nielson's atelier at Gobelins. "Aux alentours" (with borders) refers to the production technique, whereby a detailed scene was fit into a plainer, more quickly executed surrounding.

Jacob Christoph Le Blon, after Nicholas Blakey, Louix XV, roi de France, 1739. Apparently Le Blon added brown, black, and white plates to this impression; in other pictures those colors were often added by hand. The creation of this image, like that of a comparable portrait of George I, was probably connected to Le Blon's receipt of special privileges in both England and France. Source: National Gallery of Art. 1954.12.177 Rosenwald Collection.

Ceramic cross-section. This cross-section shows the separate layers of: 1. clay 2. glazed

Painted silk dress, ca. 1770. A black-and-white image (taken about 1950) of the dress made from this painted silk taffeta. The underskirt is not original. Source: From Philadelphia Museum of Art. Acc. No. 1942-33-2.

Josiah Wedgwood, First Day's Vase, 1769. One of six vases thrown by Wedgwood himself to commemorate the opening of Etruria, the Wedgwood-Bentley factory in Staffordshire. Made of the new and fashionable Basalt clays, and decorated in the Etruscan encaustic style, the legend on the reverse of the vase reads, JUNE XIII. M.DCC. LXIX. One of the first Day's Productions at Etruria in Staffordshire by Wedgwood and Bentley Artes Etruriae Renascuntur (The arts of Etruria have been reborn.) Source: © Wedgewood Museum, Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, England.

George Edwards, "Pompadore Bird" from A Natural History of Uncommon Birds and Gleanings of Natural History (London,1743-64). A bird native to northern South America, the pomadour cotinga (Xipholena punicea) was identified by Edwards in the early 1750s, about the time that pompadour became a fashionable color name in England.

Moses Harris, Compound colors, [1766]. Harris claimed his wheel of compound colors could be used to determine the color contrasts "so frequently necessary" for painting. Source: From Moses Harris, The Natural System of Colours . . . (London, [1766]).

George Lichtenberg, Color triangle, ca. 1775. Lichtenberg's replication of Tobias Mayer's triangle has only seven chambers per side, rather than Mayer's suggested 12. In his comments to the Opera inedita, Lichtenberg complained of the difficulties of creating a color reproduction according to Mayer's instructions. Source: From Tobias Mayer, Tobiae Mayeri. . . Opera inedita: Vol. I. Commentationes Societati Regiae scientiarvm oblatas, qvae integrae svpersvnt, cvm tabvla selenographica complecten. Trans. and ed. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Göttingen, 1775, plate III.

Pfannenschmid's variation on the color triangles of Mayer and Lambert. In keeping with his occupational interests, Pfannnenschmid was explicit about the use of the color triangle as an artist's tool. He also sold the colors necessary to complete his model and make it useful. One could mix the required shades from a set of basic colors or purchase all 64 colors already prepared for application. Source: From August Pfannenschmidt, Essai sur la manière de mélanger et composer toutes les couleurs . . . (Lausanne, 1788).

A recipe for yellow lake pigment. The yellow pigment turmeric lake precipitates rapidly from the solution, making a very dramatic demonstration. Shaw's instructions produce an enormous quantity of pigment, but require some changes for that turmeric lake to be good enough. Source: Peter Shaw, Chemical Lectures . . . (London, 1734), page 178.

Table of red colors, with samples. Schüffer's color charts described and ordered both unmixed and mixed colors together. Here, bands one through eight correspond to the unmixed colors shown on the shield. He instructs the reader how to fill the remaining bands with mixtures of two or three colors. Source: Muster und Register der rothen Farben. From Jacob Christian Schäffer, Entwurf einer allgemeinen Farbenverein . . . (Regensburg, 1769), plate II.

The typical operations of a dyehouse. This image depicts all the processes of silk dyeing as taking place in a single room. The dyestuff is prepared, the skeins tied off to keep the yarns from tangling. The skeins are then mordanted and dyed. The cauldrons at right are suspended in the masonry support with the heat source beneath or surrounding the vat. Source: Teinturie de Riviere. Attelier et différentes opérations pour la teinture des soies. From Recueil des planches de l'Encyclopédie méthodique . . ., vol. 8 (Paris, 1790) f. 59.

Products of the blue vat. Forty-four pounds of cotton were dyed 13 different shades of blue or compound colors, plus additional weights of unspecified colors. Source: Produit de la cuve en bleu. From Procès-verbal des operations de teintures faites à Yvetot, par le Sieur François Gonin . . . (Rouen, 1756), page 6.

Francis Hayman, Finding of the Infant Moses, 1746. Detail (slave girl). Credit: By kind permission of Coram Family in the care of the Foundling Museum. Photograph by Chris Titmus, Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge.

A visit by Jean-Baptiste Colbert to the Gobelins tapestry manufacture, ca. 1691-99. Factory visits were an official duty for some, but a source of amusement for many travelers. Entrepreneurs such as Josiah Wedgwood frequently worried that the innocent-seeming visitors were actually spies for his rivals.

Cross-section of canvas prepared for painting. As found in Francis Hayman's Finding of the Infant Moses. 1. Warp 2. Weft 3. First ground layer 4. Second (fat) ground layer 5. Toning layer 6. Paint layer

Printed textile from M. Eymar, of Nimes, 1765. Sample of a Turkey-red printed cotton, submitted to the Conseil de Commerce in 1765 by Simon Eymard (or Eymar) of Nîmes. As expected, the red color turned brown during testing. The sample was approved despite some loss of vitality to the color noted by Macquer. Source: From Macquer, "Rapport de différens Échantillons de toiles peintes, de cuirs, et de mouchoirs de soie teints et peints de la fabrique du Sr Eymar de Nîmes," 1765, AN F/12/2259.

Philo-Tinctorius to the Chemistry Committee of the Society of Arts, 3 December 1765. In this letter, an anonymous inventor described his efforts to improve colormaking, and, perhaps, win a prize from the Society of Arts. Philo-Tinctorius discussed his research and offered a chemical rationale, based on Stahl and Hellot, for the experiments he performed, as well as the practical considerations behind his undertaking.

John Wilson to the Chemistry Committee of the Society of Arts, 12 February 1761. Wilson, a manufacturer of cotton velvets in Manchester, included a sample of his Turkey-red dyed cotton in his submission to the Society of Arts in 1761. His processes twice won the prize offered by the Society.