Industry covers colour in the crafts, and paint and dye industries, as well as in lighting, lasers, in film and photography.

It covers a compartment of wisdom and knowledge known as praxiology that permeates all the other sections, and will be cross-referenced to most other subjects, especially including Art and Design.

Secret Industrial Colour processes of the past
In past ages colour making processes have been kept as guild secrets, which if divulged the culprits might be punished with death. By the 17th c. most of the processes were published in books called Valuable Secrets. In the 'Age of Reason' of the 18th c. the French published the great work on the Metiers - arts, crafts and industries which included the paint and dye industries and many colour-processes once considered secret. Not all the secrets of colour creation were now known, so in 1848, the British Government sent a Royal Commission to Italy to discover the ultimate secrets of Italian colouring. Mrs Merrifield was appointed to the Commission, and her discoveries were published with Italian and Latin manuscripts printed on the right with translations on the left-hand pages.

Still today the processes involved in making paints and dyes are little-known and not understood by the general public. Few know how rigorously an artist's colourmen's industry such as that of Winsor and Newton apply tests to their paints - tests for consistency, flow, particle size and drying time. Sophisticated machines, such as the infra-red spectrophotometer analyse the ingredients of paint mixtures, and the ultra-violet spectrophotometer measures chromaticity.

References
DIDEROT, D. & d' ALEMBERT (1751-6) Encyclopédie, Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métier

MERRIFIELD, M.P. (1949) Original Treasises, dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries, on the Arts of Painting, oil, miniature, mosaic, and on glass; of gildinng, dyeing and the preparing of colours and artificial gems. London: John Murray

PAVEY, D (1983) The Artist's Colourmens' Story. Harrow: Reckitt & Colman