The collection
Six colors, read across cultures
A reference collection that gathers, in one place and with a citation for every claim, what published research says about the meaning of six core colors, and how that meaning shifts from one culture, century, and market to the next.
Built to be cited and built on
InfrastructureThis is a reference others extend, not a file to download once. Every record carries a permanent identifier and a copy-ready citation, so a finding here can be pointed to from a paper, a syllabus, or another dataset and still resolve years later. The collection grows the way a shared reference grows: new color and case records are contributed under a stated standard of evidence and review, and each is citable the moment it is published.
Success is read in two numbers that are not yet posted because they would be invented: the count of contributors who have added or revised a record, and the count of scholarly works that cite the collection or a record in it. A teaching module drawn from these records is a welcome secondary use, not the headline.
Primary fieldwork is live
New: wave 1The database carries its own primary data. Wave 1 of The Color Testimony Project, the project's fieldwork arm, is collected and published: eight recorded interviews with contributors of Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Chinese-American backgrounds, seven completed five-scale rating cards, and the quotes, idioms, and generational testimony they produced. Every color record's survey panel shows real ratings with their sample size, and quotes from the interviews sit inside the records, cited by contributor code.
Wave 2 opened in September 2026 with a short-form protocol built for school days and aimed at contributors outside the Chinese diaspora; the rating card is unchanged, so the waves pool. The fieldwork layer is built as an oral-history archive to published standards and precedents, and a theory page sets out how anthropologists argue about color and what each position predicts for this data. The public progress log carries the counts, the release history, and what is still open.
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What this collection is
ScopeColor meaning is usually discussed one anecdote at a time: white is for mourning here, red is for luck there. This collection treats those claims as evidence to be sourced rather than folklore to be repeated. Each record states the core meanings a color carries, documents how that meaning varies across at least three cultures with a real citation for each variation, adds a short historical note, names the kind of evidence behind the claims, and lists its sources. Each record's survey panel carries primary data from the project's own fieldwork, The Color Testimony Project, with the sample size stated on the panel and the method documented on the fieldwork page.
Case records
10 cited findingsBeneath the six color records sits a finding-aid layer: one record per distinct, separately citable cross-cultural finding. These are the evidentiary objects that the color records synthesize. Each links to a single peer-reviewed or scholarly source and carries its own Dublin Core record.