espectro.dev

About the Project

espectro.dev is a collection of color vocabularies: historic color dictionaries and the palettes they describe, translated into values you can use on screen. Every collection gets hex, RGB, CMYK and L*a*b* values, Tailwind CSS and CSS variable exports, a free JSON API and MCP tools for AI assistants.

Sanzo Wada

The first collection is Sanzo Wada's A Dictionary of Color Combinations (1933–34). While the physical book is a masterpiece of print, it can be hard to translate its colors straight into web design or digital art. Here you get all 348 combinations and 159 colors, each with:

• Digital Translation: Hex, RGB, CMYK, and L*a*b* values for every classic combination.
• Context Awareness: Tailwind CSS and CSS variable export for immediate developer use.
• Open API: A free JSON API under /api/sanzo-wada for programmatic access.
• MCP Integration: sanzo-wada-* tools for AI coding assistants via the MCP protocol.

Werner

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours (Edinburgh, 1814) names 110 colors by things in nature: each comes with an animal, a vegetable and a mineral that shows it. Every color has its own page, an endpoint under /api/werner and werner-* MCP tools.

Ridgway

Robert Ridgway's Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (Washington, 1912) fixes 1,115 named colors on 53 plates, ordered by hue, tint, shade and greyness, so that naturalists could describe a bird or a fungus in the same words. Every color has its own page, an endpoint under /api/ridgway and ridgway-* MCP tools.

Credits. The JSON dataset of 159 colours and 348 combinations is sourced from mattdesl/dictionary-of-colour-combinations, which compiles palettes from Sanzo Wada’s book and is available under the MIT license. Werner hex values come from Graphics::ColorNames::Werner (CC0), sampled by Nicholas Rougeux for his online edition. Ridgway hex values come from davo/Color-Standards-and-Color-Nomenclature (MIT license), sampled from the Project Gutenberg edition.