Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)

The author assembles an experimental history of colours that emphasizes practical demonstrations and careful observations over speculative theory. The text offers general considerations about colour, focused analyses of whiteness and blackness, and a large series of hands-on trials—especially on red dyes and tinctures—employing acids, sulphureous salts, decoctions, distillations, and sublimations. Procedures are described in detail to allow replication, while deliberate omissions include many natural colour changes and trade recipes. The work is presented as a collection of materials and methods intended to provoke further experimentation and to assist future efforts to derive a coherent theory of colour.