Elementary Color by Milton Bradley

Books about color are fascinating to me. I've collected a few over the years and one of my favorites has to be Milton Bradley's Elementary Color published in Springfield, Mass. in 1895 by the Milton Bradley Co. The color chart opposite the title page, a thing of beauty, is made from 126 individual squares of Bradley Educational Colored Papers.

In these two charts of color scales two distinct classes of color are represented, namely, pure colors and broken colors. The pure colors consist of the purest possible pigmentary imitations of spectrum colors, with their tints and shades, and the broken colors are those pure colors dulled by the admixture of neutral grays in various tones. (p. 40.)

The book, an ex-library copy that never circulated, has lovely endpapers and illustrations.

Born in Vienna, Maine, in 1836, Milton Bradley set up the first color lithography shop in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, established in Springfield in 1860. He also invented the paper cutter. He produced and marketed a board game called The Checkered Game of Life, and by 1861, had sold more than 45,000 copies of his game. He formed Milton Bradley and Company in 1864 to print other games and game manuals. The company is now a division of Hasbro.