Career

Schiffermüller was a teacher at the Theresianum College in Vienna. His collection was presented to the old United Royal and Imperial Natural History Collections (Vereinigtes kk Naturalien-Cabinet) at the Hofburg where it burnt during the revolution in 1848. k. Theresianum (1775). His collection is in the Kaiserlichen Hof-Naturalienkabinett (now Naturhistorisches Museum Wien).

Schiffermüller is also noteworthy for his work in developing a scientifically based colour nomenclature.

In his Versuch eines Farbensystems (1772), Schiffermüller addressed the need for a standardised nomenclature with which to describe the countless colours of nature. Work by predecessors in this field had proved unsatisfactory: he mentions suggestions made by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (1723–1778) in his Entomologia Carniolica (1763) and August Johann Rösel (1705–1759) in his Insecten-Belustigung (1746-1761).

To serve as a model, Schiffermüller himself presents a table classifying and sub-classifying shades of blue, and naming them in German, Latin and French: in all, 81 German terms are listed. Matching this table, and using the same alphabetical notation, is a 3 x 12 matrix showing a set of colour samples for blue, with some discussion of the pigments used.

The work also contains an attractive full-page engraving with a colour circle, inspired by the optical theory of Father Louis Bertrand Castel (1688–1757) and hand-tinted with twelve colours continuously shading into one another.

Evident throughout this pioneering work is a subtle response to the nuances of colour and their accurate rendition.