Sifting through ephemera in a used bookstore, I stumbled upon a “tinted drawing papers” sample pack for the years 1924 and 1925. Manufactured by the Milton Bradley Company, this pack (with its now somewhat faded papers) is a wonderful construction. Each piece of paper, aside from the last, has a hole in it so that you can see and feel all the papers and colors without even opening the book. (It reminds me of the children’s book format where each page has a hole in it that becomes part of the story. See an early example here.) Moreover, the Tinted Drawings Papers cover is actually the first paper sample, and the back cover (with packing details) is also the last paper sample. The entire booklet is an exercise in design economy and beauty. Art is everywhere, and so is design.

The booklet led me to wonder, what else could be packaged this way? Paint sample cards, perhaps, lined up in gradients at every hardware store. These cards are delightful not only for their colors but also for the color titles : atomic tangerine, eagle rock, shadow ridge, billowy clouds, and so forth. You’ll find countless craft projects that use paint chips essentially as construction paper, but what really delights me are the pieces that incorporate the words as well. Haikus (the English version) are an easy ask, and there is even a Paint Chip Poetry game by Chronicle Books. The chips’ words can also serve as writing prompts or you can name the colors around a theme like literature. Into this already crowded field of formats, I submit yet another entry. Paint chips arranged like Bradley’s beautiful Tinted Drawing Papers, where words follow one another instead of a series of cascading numbers. In the image below, Behr-brand greens give us an example of how, paint chip by paint chip, we can arrive at a true “paradise of greenery.”

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Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: CORWIN LEVI

Corwin is a visual artist working in design, illustration, bookmaking, curating, and writing. As an artist, he has attended over twenty artist residencies. He has also have lived in eighteen cities across twelve states. Along with Michelle Aldredge, he co-created Mirror Mirrored: An Artists’ Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales. He is currently remixing vintage game boards and making a book from illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.