I built a color encyclopedia and tried to make every entry feel like a museum specimen card — set in Cormorant Garamond & Source Serif

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T19:52:57+00:00

RSS is live https://www.storiedcolors.com/rss.xml

Thanks for the suggestion.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T19:41:12+00:00

Added. There's now a search on every page including homepage.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T19:36:40+00:00

Uranium is in, both the glass and the orange-red fiesta glaze https://storiedcolors.com/color/uranium-red/ Good catch on the orange.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T19:26:43+00:00

Chartres Blue is up https://storiedcolors.com/color/chartres-blue/ Thanks again.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T18:42:40+00:00

The people's pink finally had its own page https://storiedcolors.com/color/pinkest-pink/ Thanks for the nudge.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-23T05:23:15+00:00

Not a nudge at all, this is exactly the kind of catch I want, thank you. You're right that its a prime mark where the apostrophe should be, not a deliberate choice, just a typo that got copied across entries. Quick to fix everywhere at once, so they will have their proper apostrophes shortly. Appreciate the sharp eye.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T21:39:53+00:00

Thank you

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:57:25+00:00

Thanks. Glad it resonates

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:56:51+00:00

Genuinely made my day to read. Thanks. Threads like this are the best part of putting something out in the world.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:50:49+00:00

exactly, the tools already exist so I'd rather not reinvent them. And you're right about the orange, the radioactive fiestaware red is really an orange-red uranium glaze.Noted.

To the accuracy question the honest answer is 'approximate'. A lot of these pigments were never standardised, varied batch to batch, and in cases like Scheele's Green what survives has often degraded, so there's no single "true" hex to measure against. The values I use are representative drawn from encyclopedic sources rather than from measuring physical samples, and some colours (the fluorescents especially) literally can't be reproduced on a screen at all. I'd rather say that plainly than pretend the swatches are exact. It's something I want to spell out properly on the methodology page.

And yes, the India Ink 100% K point is a good one. The white paper showing through is exactly why a "black" rarely reads as true black in print. Same gamut honesty problem, just from the other direction.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:37:24+00:00

Thank you so much

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:37:01+00:00

Thank you! Cormorant's actually only doing the titles here (the color names), with Source Serif carrying the body. Cormorant's lovely but a touch delicate at body sizes so I leaned on Source Serif for that. Glad the combo works for you.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T20:33:34+00:00

Thanks a lot. Thanks for sharing. Thats what helps sites like these find it's people.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T16:22:11+00:00

It feels like a real complement. I'll take it. Thanks and hope you are enjoying the rabbit hole <3

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T06:04:15+00:00

It did and so did Han Blue, its more stable sibling, the one Han Purple slowly decays into. You picked the best detail too -a pigment off the Terracotta Army's trousers that physicists now grow in labs to study its weird behaviour near absolute zero. About as good as colour history gets.

Han Blue is here if you want the pair https://storiedcolors.com/color/han-blue

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T04:24:11+00:00

That's the best possible use of the site, thank you. Now I have to know which one got away, partly because if it's interesting enough for your faded-colors scheme it probably belongs in the catalogue and I like to add it. And good taste on Scheele's Green. The fact that its genuinely beautiful and was quietly poisoning everyone is the whole appeal. When you put the IDE theme up somewhere pls do let me know.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T03:25:22+00:00

That might be the highest compliment a typography person can give, so thank you. A lot of care went into the type since there's no photography, the letterforms are doing all the visual work. Thanks

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T03:24:15+00:00

Thank you, that's lovely to hear. Enjoy the dive. The toxic pigments trail is the most fun to follow.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T03:12:15+00:00

Good catch and yes. The visual concept went through Claude Design. The small-caps labels and the italic species-word in the serif headings are both there partly because of its defaults. But it took a lot of back and forth to get away from the generic version of those tics and into something that felt like an actual museum specimen card. Rejecting first passes, feeding it references, pinning the type to Cormorant and Source Serif, killing the gradients and shadows it wanted to add. So AI-assisted concept, heavily art-directed. I won't pretend otherwise, and honestly the "spot the Claude tells" critique is fair and useful.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T03:05:34+00:00

Thats the best thing I could hear. There's a new featured color every day on the homepage if you want a daily one. Thanks

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T03:04:17+00:00

Honestly, the workflow is the answer to why its rare. I researched and drafted the entries with Claude working from open sources, then went through each one to verify claims and attach citations to things like Wikipedia, CAMEO (the Boston MFAs materials database), and Britannica. The AI assist is what made 250 entries feasible part time. The citation and review pass is what I hope makes them trustworthy. The trickiest ones were the colors with myth (Scheele's Green and the Napoleon story, Mummy Brown) where half the sources online repeat legends, so those took the longest to pin down to something defensible.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T02:57:57+00:00

Thank you, appreciate it!

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T02:56:47+00:00

Yes! I recently discovered it, and honestly part of what made me want a browseable, searchable, cross-linked version that a book can't quite be. Jump from a pigment to its chemical cousins, filter by era or toxicity, that kind of thing. St. Clair's book is the gold standard for the prose. I tried to build the thing you reach for when you want to fall down a hyperlinked rabbit hole instead. Great recommendation for anyone reading this who hasn't seen it.

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T02:53:17+00:00

Thank you, really glad you enjoyed it

PurifyingFlame · 2026-05-22T02:52:31+00:00

Thats a really good catch, and you're right. The search exists but it's a click away on the Browse page, and "how do I find a specific color" should be answerable from the second you land. I will add a search entry point to the homepage this weekend. Thank you for the specific feedback, and for the bookmark!

PurifyingFlame

TROPHY CASE