I admire the capacity of certain historical figures who were able to focus on ambitious projects that led to the understanding of large volumes of information with easily graspable theoretical structures. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), for example, brought hierarchical order to the natural world with a naming convention that laid the groundwork for the discoveries of scientists in a later era. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) brought order to evolutionary processes by structuring the biological traits of different species. Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) established the laws of inheritance and influenced genetics by analyzing the growth of plants in his garden at the abbey. Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) used small cards to combine and recombine the known elements into a structure that we now call the periodic table of elements. One thing that you will notice is that these exploratory researchers came from scientific fields, which given their numerical accuracy and precision more easily lend themselves to systematic structuring than the more esoteric fields of art.
Enter Sanzo Wada.
Born in 1883 in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, he attended the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied western style oil painting. His work of art entitled “South Wind” earned him a scholarship to travel to Europe and continue learning about European painting techniques and theories. His work in painting, custom design, print-making, and more blended the artistic sense of Japanese aesthetics and the principles of western colour theory and practice. He won an academy award for his work on film custom design, making him one of the first Japanese artists to receive such an award in the United States.
In Japan, he led the Standard Colour Association, and in 1933, he published a six-volume Dictionary of Color Combinations that were meant to be used in the kimono, textile, and design trades. The book contained colour swatches showing colour combinations based on his theoretical, empirical, and artistic sensibilities.
I recently purchased a book of the same name that is based on Mr. Wada’s work. It contains various colour combinations as they appeared in the original volumes. I was thrilled to see an image of the those volumes in the book.
The pocket tome is small and chunky with a soft cover that bends very nicely when you hold it. The cover is protected with a brown paper jacket with a simple design. You can find all the colour combinations online, but I think that holding the book in hand is a nice tactile experience.
They didn’t have the English version, so I purchased the Japanese one. I figured that I could use a translation tool to read the Japanese characters. Thankfully, the Google translation tool does a good job of it, as you can see in the following screenshot.
What follows is a tour de force in eye-popping colour design with page after page of colour combinations as conceived by Sanzo Wada.
Even without knowing Japanese, it is easy to discern what the book is about and its practical application.
The pages are glossy and nicely show the colours with their names in Japanese and English. I like translating the Japanese names because they are different from the ones printed in English and often with more poetic imagery such as "the color of the underside of the leaves." The following image shows a translated page with the Japanese text along the top.
There are combinations 2,3, and 4 colours, 348 in total.
There is an index of all the colours, the page in which they appear, and their CMYK value.
The last section of the notebook is dedicated to swatches that you can cut out for your own project. This is a hands-on project, after all.
How exactly did Sanzo Wada come up with these colour combinations? It seems like a mixture of science and art. Sense and sensibility. He took into account harmony of contrasts, saturation, proportion, weight, and natural balance. He developed this systematic colour structure at a time when the use of calibrated swatches in design was not commonplace, so his work paved the way for later developments in colour theory, design, and practice.
I think this book is a great resource for anyone who interacts with different elements of art and visual design. I like holding it in my hand and browsing through the different combinations. What a tremendous effort. I imagine Mr. Wada long ago poring over his colour combinations, rearranging them painstakingly, wondering how they came together into a harmonious aesthetic whole.
Resources
A Dictionary Of Color Combinations Vol 1 (Japanese Edition)
Wada Sanzo's Dictionary of Color Combinations
https://wadacolors.com/about/
The color book that has been inspiring artists for 90 years: Sanzo Wada's Dictionary of Color Combinations
https://www.kojoart.com/en/blogs/art-techniques/sanzo-wada-dictionary-of-color-combinations
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