Colour Wheel Plates

A range of bespoke colour wheel ceramic plates featured in the 2025 exhibition 'COLOUR: A Chromatic Promenade through the Royal Pavilion'.

These bone china plates feature Georgian and early Victorian colour diagrams by Moses Harris, George Field and J. F. L. Mérimée, all featured in books published between 1782 and 1841. Three of the four original books are on display in the COLOUR exhibition from 21 March to 19 October 2025.

From the 1700s onwards there was a lot of excitement about and interest in colour theory. Scientists, artists, historians, and poets all developed new ideas about colour. In books about colour, many authors tried to find a visual representation of a colour system and many settled for the shape of circles, wheels, stars and flowers, or (in three-dimensional form) globes, spheres or trees.

They are engraved plates with hand-colouring, meaning the outline was printed, but all the colours were applied by hand. Therefore they all look very slightly different. 

Available in four designs. Approximately 21cm diameter.

'Scheme of Colours', Moses Harris, 1782

'Scheme of Colours' was published in An Exposition of English Insects by Moses Harris in 1782. This is the only colour diagram in Harris's book; all other images show insects.

'Chromatics', George Field, 1817

A colour star from Chromatics by George Field, his first book on colour, published in 1817. Field also produced pigments for artists and may well have supplied George IV's designers with pigments and paints. This colour star is really overlapping triangles (which can also be seen at the centre of Moses Harris's diagram). There are several colour stars in Field's book, as well as other colour diagrams. 

'Chromatic Scale', J. F. L. Mérimée, 1839

'Chromatic Scale', or 'Echelle Chromatique' by J. F. L. Mérimée, 1839 (first published in 1830) is a good representation of the RYB colour model, in which red, yellow and blue pigments are considered 'primary colours'. When all are mixed together as paints, you end up with a dark grey / brown or black, as seen in the centre. Physically this means a complete absence of light. This is the only book not on display in the COLOUR exhibition.

'Chromatography', George Field, 1841

This colour diagram is from the frontispiece of George Field's Chromatography, 1841. By 1841, Field had developed his diagrams into this beautifully coloured colour wheel that reminds one of both a flower and a compass.