colour boxcolor boxn.
/ˈkʌlə bɒks/, U.S. /ˈkələr ˌbɑks/ 1. A box containing a colour or colours (colour n.1 18a); spec. a portable box for holding an artist's paints, brushes, etc., a paint box.
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society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > painting and drawing > equipment for painting or drawing > [noun] > containers for paints
shell1565
paintbox1725
colour box1749
paint pot1792
pochade box1954
1749 Arts Compan. vi. §2. 34 Lay on the Gold-size I have mentioned in the Colour box.
1779 Monthly Rev. Apr. 305 The person that is..consecrated for the day, keeps the colour-box in one hand, says a short prayer, gives the Bramin one or two handfuls of rice, and..returns home.
1847 C. Brontë Jane Eyre III. iv. 102 They discovered I could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service.
1881 M. E. Braddon Asphodel I. 7 Daphne produced her drawing-block, and opened her colour-box.
1910 Archit. Rec. May 414/2 I've bought a color box and brushes. I am going to try it out practically on canvas.
1961 M. Levy Studio Dict. Art Terms 88 Pochade box, a small portable colour-box with panels fitted into the lid for quick sketching.
1992 Calif. Hist. 71 14/1 The artists made good use of the long summer days, rising at dawn and..riding off with their stools and color boxes.
2. Manufacturing Technology. A box from which printing rollers in a machine pick up coloured ink or pigment. Now historical.
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society > communication > printing > printing machine or press > parts of printers or presses > [noun] > ink reservoir
colour box1807
ink-trough1818
ink-duct1835
ink-fountain1875
1807 Repertory of Arts 2nd Ser. 10 331 I mean to introduce perpetual and self-acting inking, or colour boxes and wipers.
1858–75 A. Ure Dict. Arts I. 604 Sometimes for the highest rollers, and especially in machines of more than four colours, the cumbrous colour box is dispensed with, and a doctor inserted in a curved frame is applied to the roller instead.
1920 R. P. White Occup. Affectations Skin (ed. 2) ix. 227 The printers wash out the utensils and colour boxes with the same hot water over and over again.
1994 Technol. & Culture 35 78 This mixture was transferred from a color box to the engraved copper roller by means of a color furnisher.
3. A large box containing an arrangement of prisms and mirrors, devised by Clerk Maxwell for combining the colours of the spectrum in any required proportion. Now historical.Maxwell mentioned the box in his paper ‘On the Theory of Compound Colours, and the Relations of the Colours of the Spectrum’ ( Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) (1860) 150 65, 78–9), but did not there call it a ‘colour box’. For a description of the construction and use of the box, see Optics & Laser Technol. (2006) 38 213–15.
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the world > matter > colour > science of colour > [noun] > instruments combining colours
colour circle1854
colour top1855
chromatrope1860
colour box1870
wheel of colour1877
colour organ1881
colour wheel1909
1857 J. C. Maxwell Let. 8 May (1990) I. 502 My portable instrument consists of a wood box... The light enters at slits at the end of the box and falls on a prism at the other end.]
1870 J. C. Maxwell Let. 6 July (1995) II. 551 I made a great colour-box in 1862 and worked it in London in 62 & 64.
1925 New Phytologist 24 187 All the filters were brought to very nearly the same total transmission value..by placing a prepared film filter..behind the red and green filters in the ‘colour-boxes’.
1979 Nature 15 Nov. 236/2 When he experimented at the window with the colour-box used for studies of colour vision (painted black, and nearly eight feet long) his neighbours thought him crazy to spend so many hours staring into a coffin.
2007 F. Viénot & P. Walraven in J. Schanda Colorimetry 223 With his color box, Maxwell was able in the same year to match daylight with a mixture of three spectral lights.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1749