The Book of Colours (Das Farbenbuch).
The Leitmotiv, the Content, and the 18-Colours Printing Process
We're honoured to announce that our October webinar will be a presentation by Dr Juraj Lipscher, co-author of the magnificent German book on pigments and dyes, Das Farbenbuch. This presentation will be of interest to the general public as well as to anyone dealing professionally with pigments and dyes, painting and commercial printing, and we ask our members and friends to please pass on news of this important presentation to their contacts using the following link: https://coloursociety.org.au/event-5817477.
Das Farbenbuch by Juraj Lipscher, Stefan Muntwyler and Hanspeter Schneider is a remarkable book of 496 pages illustrating 367 pigments and dyes and also containing 17 pigment analyses of paintings, a timeline for the historical use of pigments,19 extensive and richly illustrated color stories, and a glossary and pigment index. For his webinar, Juraj Lipscher will discuss the motivation and main tenets of the book with a short overview of its contents centered around the interface between science and art. He will show examples from the compendium of pigments and dyes featuring handmade painted swatches, photographs of the coloring agents, and examples of paintings where the pigments were prominently used. Further on, he will present pigment analyses of paintings from all historical periods and examples of longer stories about an important coloring agent or an important colour. In the second part of the talk, he will explain the reasons for developing a proprietary 18-colours printing process for the book, discuss its technical aspects, and compare the results with the conventional 4-colours printing process.
Dr. Juraj Lipscher was born in Prague in former Czechoslovakia. After moving to Switzerland in 1968, he studied Chemistry at the University of Zurich, where he obtained his PhD in physical chemistry. He then worked as a chemistry teacher at the college level in Switzerland until his retirement in 2014. Juraj Lipscher has published numerous publications, especially on interdisciplinary topics such as chemistry and art, chemistry and crime, order and chaos, the chemistry of photography, etc. In 2010, he was awarded the Balmer Prize by the Swiss Chemical Society for innovative chemistry teaching. After his retirement, he was employed as a research fellow at the MINT Learning Center at ETH Zurich (Swiss Institute of Technology). For more than twenty years, he has been interested in the interface between science and art, especially in the methods used to analyze works of art. His website colourlex.com is considered the international standard in the field of painting materials and pigment analyses of paintings and is visited by thousands of people every day.
His photographs have been shown in exhibitions in Zurich, Lausanne (Musée de l'Elysée), New York, Paris, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and France and published in magazines such as NZZ Folio, Fotonews (DE), European Photography (DE) and Fotograf (CZ).
Juraj's co-authors on Das Farbenbuch were Stefan Muntwyler and Hanspeter Schneider. Stefan Muntwyler was born in Switzerland and studied Art in Zurich and was the artist in the team. Stefan passed away in 2023. Hanspeter Schneider was born in Switzerland and studied graphic design in Zurich. He was responsible for the artistic design of Das Farbenbuch and developed the proprietary 18-color printing process employed in producing our book.
Bookiongs for this free webinar will open in mid-September.
