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The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools & Hospitals (1930)

An illustration of a tidy classroom with aqua-colored desks, each with a red chair and an open book, lit by natural light from large windows and overhead lights.

A warmly lit dining hall featuring wooden tables and chairs on a checkered floor, flanked by an orange wainscot and decorated with framed artwork.

A serene office space with mint green walls, furnished with a desk, chair, and medical equipment, illuminated by pendant lights and daylight from a large window.

A clean and functional restroom corridor with a series of sinks and stall doors in salmon pink, contrasted with a cool blue floor and natural light filtering through the windows.

If you’re looking for some color palette inspiration, check out these scans from The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools & Hospitals (1930). Which is presumably a book? Whatever…the precision and colors of these illustrations are marvelous.

Discussion  9 comments

Lisa S.

I wonder how much of this is built on things like Kandinsky, "Über das Geistige in der Kunst" ("On the Spiritual in Art")? Mentally unearthing long ago undergrad theses where I read all his colour theory...

Todd Lemoine

Reminds me of Owen Pomery, who I think I learned about from reading kottke.org. I love how clean and tidy the styles are, but still really warm, too. https://kottke.org/19/10/narrative-illustrator-owen-pomery

Dirk Bergstrom

Wow, P&C providing zero useful information about the source material. "Scanned by us." Really? Grrrr.

This would arguably slot nicely into my collection of early 20th century German industrial photography books, but only if I can figure out what it is...

Jason KottkeMOD

Yeah I poked around for a book by that title to no avail.

Lisa S.

As best I can tell, it was published by a British paint company that seems no longer to be in business (though I did find a paint company with that name still in India & Bangladesh).

Dirk Bergstrom

I emailed P&C, and they updated the page with the name of the book. Looks like it was a brochure-ish thing from a paint company. Ephemera like that is very hard to track down. They say they'll put their copy up for sale...

Dirk Bergstrom

P&C emailed me again to add:

The book is a hardback and was published in collaboration with Robbialac paints. Hope this helps!

Reply in this thread

Denkfix

Reminds me of Herge's Tintin background drawings. → https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/1d/45/0f1d45eeae317eb8e0ebb0f4d9229a6f.jpg

Jason KottkeMOD

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