Color practices, color theories, and the creation of color in objects: Britain and France in the eighteenth century

My dissertation uses the multi-faceted subject of color as a basis to explore both eighteenth-century production techniques and contemporary ideas about the nature of color that derived from chemistry and physics. Uniting an otherwise disparate group of theorists, practitioners and entrepreneurs into a color industry, I examine the broader issues of practice-theory interactions in eighteenth-century Europe.; Color is a valuable point from which to study such connections. It was both familiar and remote, theoretical and practical. In the eighteenth century, the activities that transferred color from one material to another---dyeing, printing, painting, staining---were familiar, instructions were easily located and materials just as easily procured. Color was also known as a scientific subject, with study toward understanding a continuing effort of the eighteenth century. This combination made it an excellent locus to join theory and practice in order to enhance both. For many people in the eighteenth century, color was a logical point from which to demonstrate public utility, engagement with polite society, and beliefs about the value of nature to humankind.; I describe the transfer of Information about practices and about theories as constant and multi-directional, and thus similar in style to other eighteenth-century social and intellectual exchange. I also argue against the use of nineteenth-century models and their focus on events and institutions that represent the professionalization of science and industry. These models do not represent eighteenth-century economic organization, social institutions and intellectual structures, and so it has been difficult to identify substantive interaction among practitioners, theoreticians or entrepreneurs concerned with the investigation and production of color in objects. An illustration of this problem is the invention of manufactured colors, an active pursuit of many eighteenth-century colorists, and a goal for the use of theory. Efforts to develop and improve color for one part of the color industry regularly turned to other practices for examples. More modern structures tend to downplay this kind of interaction and intense scrutiny that existed in the eighteenth century color industry. Thus, my study of practice-theory connections in the color industry also illuminates the social organization that linked fine and decorative arts to contemporary science and technology. And it provides a model to understand other intellectual and practical connections that existed in the eighteenth century.