Cochineal Codex

Every colour once had to be invented. Long before paint came in tidy tubes, people crushed beetles for scarlet, ground precious stone into blue, and boiled sea snails for a purple worth more than gold. Cochineal Codex is a small museum of these hard-won hues, where each pigment carries the story of the hands, journeys, and accidents that first coaxed it into the world.

Open the codex to a gallery of living swatches, each block of colour a doorway into its own short history — where it came from, who prized it, and why it mattered. Tap through eras on a chromatic timeline, mark the shades you love, and test your eye in the Swatch Quiz, where a single square of colour asks you to name the pigment behind it. Listen to any entry read aloud, share a favourite hue with a friend, and let the calm, gallery-lit layout make browsing feel like a slow walk between paintings.