Every Harvest Leaves a Different Color.
This project began with a simple observation: nature never produces exactly the same color twice.
A grape grown in one place may carry a different shade from one harvested somewhere else. Even the same crop can shift in color from year to year, shaped by its environment, season, and moment of harvest.
We observe and document these variations, extracting selected colors from images of crops and translating them into digital color references. Each color is archived together with its crop, place, and year, creating an evolving record of natural color over time.
Selected colors from the archive are then recreated in limited design objects, allowing a color first observed in a harvest to take on a new form.
Rather than searching for one perfect or standardized shade, this project preserves the differences—the subtle variations that make each harvest distinct.
WHY COLOR?
Nature Does Not Standardize.
Most colors we encounter in manufactured products are designed to be consistent.
A specific color is expected to look the same whether it is produced today or next year, in one place or another. Consistency is valuable in industrial production.
Nature works differently.
Even within the same crop, color can vary depending on where it was grown, when it was harvested, and the environment in which it developed. For us, these differences are not imperfections.
They are records of a particular crop, place, and moment in time.
Instead of reducing these variations to a single standardized color, we observe, extract, and archive them as they appear.
The question is not how we can make nature’s colors the same.
It is what we might discover by preserving their differences.
FROM HARVEST TO A VISUAL RECORD
A crop is usually understood through what we can see, taste, or use.
We wanted to look at it in another way:
What if its color could become a record of its own?
We treat each discovered color as a small piece of visual data.
Colors are observed and extracted from images of crops, then documented together with their crop, place, and year. Over time, these individual records form a growing archive, a collection of colors tied to particular harvests and moments in time.
Selected colors then move beyond the archive. They are recreated through design, allowing a color first found in a crop to take on a new form.
In this way, color becomes more than a visual detail.
It becomes a record of a place, a time, and a story and a material for new design.
THE FOUNDER'S IDEA
My name is Yujeong Yi, and this project started with a question.
The project began at the intersection of an interest in art and a curiosity about the
colors found in everyday nature.
Looking closely at crops, the founder became interested in something easily overlooked:
the same crop does not always have the same color.
A grape grown in one region may carry a different purple from one grown somewhere
else. A persimmon harvested one year may appear warmer, deeper, or more muted than
the same crop observed in another year.
And this project started with a question:
“What if we recorded these differences instead of simply calling them the same color?”
That question became the starting point for the archive.
Colors observed in images of crops are extracted and recorded not simply by conventional names such as green, orange, or purple,
but together with their crop, place, and year.
Not simply purple, but:
Grape · Dernau · 2022
Not simply green, but:
Green Tea · Jeju · 2024
Not simply orange, but:
Persimmon · Korea · 2025
The crop, place, and year become part of the identity of each color.
This approach developed into the idea of Harvest Vintage; a way of preserving natural
color not as a fixed standard, but as a visual record of a particular harvest, place, and
moment in time.
A COLOR WITH A VINTAGE
Color Belongs to a Time and Place.
Wine uses the idea of vintage because one year is not identical to another. Weather,
geography, and growing conditions contribute to the character of each harvest.
We apply a similar idea to natural color.
Our Harvest Vintage system documents colors according to their agricultural source, location, and year, creating a growing record of natural variation.
Rather than hiding variation, we celebrate it.
A color does not need to exist forever to have value.
Sometimes its inability to be perfectly reproduced is precisely what makes it worth recording.