Werners Nomenklatur der Farben: Angepasst an Zoologie, Botanik, Chemie, Mineralogie, Anatomie und die Kunst.

Charles Darwin used this book to describe colours on his voyage on HMS Beagle. || A cultural-historical treasure, bibliophilically presented: Before the Pantone Colour Guide, there was Werner's Nomenclature of Colours. ||| From snow-white to the shimmering blue of the kingfisher: painters and naturalists once used this work to determine the colours of nature. ||| What colour is the marigold, the lemon butterfly or the flint? In order to describe nature accurately, an authoritative naming of colours is indispensable. For this reason, Abraham Gottlob Werner drew up a nomenclature in the 18th century that precisely describes 79 colour shades on the basis of fossils. In order to make this colour system also applicable to other fields of knowledge and art, the Scottish plant painter Patrick Syme extended Werner's colour nomenclature by 31 colour tones in 1814 and supplemented it with examples from zoology, botany, chemistry, mineralogy and anatomy. With his colour plates and coloured examples, Werner's nomenclature formed the standardised reference to which one could refer when describing any object long before pantone compartments existed.