300 Years Before Color — Gold Butterfly

300 Years Before Color — Gold Butterfly300 Years Before Color is a remarkable historical color sample book that reveals how early color systems were explored centuries before modern color printing. The book presents hundreds of historical color charts and carefully arranged hand painted color swatches created long before standardized color systems. It was 1960 when Lawrence Herbert was working in a color printing and sales company mainly focused on cosmetics. This businessman and visionary

300 Years Before Color is a remarkable historical color sample book that reveals how early color systems were explored centuries before modern color printing.
The book presents hundreds of historical color charts and carefully arranged hand-painted color swatches created long before standardized color systems.

It was 1960 when Lawrence Herbert was working in a color printing and sales company mainly focused on cosmetics. This businessman and visionary later acquired the assets of a company that was $50,000 in debt.

In 1962 Herbert founded Pantone, developing a new formula based on 10 pigments in order to obtain more uniform results. This work eventually led to the creation of a guide of 500 standardized colors. The success was immediate among companies dedicated to graphic arts, industrial production and the textile industry.

A well-known example of its usefulness was the Kodak brand. During the 1950s the company began to suffer significant losses because the yellow color of its packaging varied slightly between production runs. Customers sometimes rejected packages with darker shades, believing the film was not original or had expired. Standardized color systems helped solve these inconsistencies across industries.

However, long before modern systems like Pantone existed, artists and scholars were already studying and documenting color through meticulous hand-crafted works. 300 Years Before Color presents a remarkable historical example of this early exploration.

The Gold Butterfly Edition is the sixth limited edition of 300 Years Before Color, following earlier releases such as the Velvet Edition and the Rothko Edition, both now sold out.

The book reveals hundreds of historical color charts and carefully arranged color swatches created centuries before modern color systems.

For artists and designers, the work also functions as an extraordinary historical color swatch book, offering a rare view into early pigment organization and color study.

Through more than 900 pages written and painted entirely by hand, the work preserves an extraordinary record of early pigment studies and color organization.

Today, 300 Years Before Color – Gold Butterfly Deluxe Edition by Galobart Limited Editions stands as a unique historical color reference book, connecting the world of contemporary color systems with the fascinating origins of color study and artistic experimentation.

Key Features

• Over 900 pages written and painted entirely by hand
• Hundreds of historical color charts and color swatches
• Early pigment studies and color organization
• Gold Butterfly Deluxe Edition by Galobart Limited Editions

The Galobart Color Library

Discover the Galobart Limited Editions collection dedicated to the history and study of color.

300 Years Before Color – Deluxe Edition
A remarkable historical work featuring hundreds of hand-painted color charts created centuries before modern color systems.

Masters of Color – Collector's Edition
An extraordinary exploration of the evolution of color in art, design and visual culture.

Together, these volumes form the foundation of the Galobart Color Library, a unique reference for artists, designers and collectors passionate about the study of color.

Historical color charts from the book 300 Years Before Color

Below you can see several pages from 300 Years Before Color, a historical color sample book containing more than 900 hand-painted color samples reproduced in this limited facsimile edition.

These pages reveal hundreds of historical color charts and carefully arranged color swatches created centuries before modern color systems. Each chart documents early pigment organization and the meticulous study of color carried out by artists and scholars long before standardized color printing.