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COLOR SPHERE
measuring instruments, cause these schemes to ignore the facts of color relation. Like ancient maps made to satisfy a conqueror, they amuse by their distortion.
Brewster’s mistaken theory underlies these schemes, as is also the case with Froebel’s gifts, whose color balls continue to give wrong notions at the very threshold of color education. As pointed out in the Appendix to Chapter III., the “ red-yellow-blue” theory inevitably spreads the warm field of yellow-red too far, and contracts the blue field, so that balance of color is rendered impossible, as illustrated in the gaudy chromo and flaming bill-board.
These schemes are criticised by Rood as “not only in the main arbitrary, but also vague”’; and, although Chevreul’s charts were published by the government in most elaborate form, their usefulness is small. Interest in the growth of the present system, because of its measured character, led Professor Rood to give assistance in the tests, and at his request a color sphere was made for the Physical Cabinet at Columbia.
