Re: Describing iris-color systems

Merrily writes:

<<  I'm not familiar with the Pantone color system.  I do know the Munsell
color
 system, though, which deals with color, hue, and shade in very small
 increments.  It's commonly used in art conservation to describe such things
 as the condition of an art work,  the effect on color of various treatments,
 or the degree of change caused by light damage.  If we ever decided to apply
 Munsell to iris description we would probably all be considered by "others"
 to be obsessive/compulsives of the first order. >>

Not necessarily. It certainly would not be would not be the first such system
to be applied to irises, or even the second. In addition to the RHS system
there once was the Ridgeway and the Mertz and Paul systems, the former the
source of many of the seemingly irrational or romantic color names in Cornell
112. 

Part of the problem in making our peace with these color names is that today
we see the survival of some of the terms, but they have become detached from
the color to which they were initially applied, that color that made them make
sense. "Bishop's Purple" for example, is not the dark blue violet to which we
have seen it applied in recent descriptions, but a sharp medium magenta,
exactly the color of an Anglican bishop's blouse. Other colors have lost their
point of reference in the public consciousness: Hermosa Pink or Neyron Pink,
once well understood terms, mean little to anyone not familiar with those
antique roses.  Many of the color names were references, direct or indirect,
to now-passe aesthetic commonplaces, or to painters, or to paint pigments
familiar to any amateur at the turn of the century-- and there were many-- who
counted watercolor among his accomplishments. A stop by an art supply store
for a watercolor paint chart may clear up quite a few problems in
comprehension. 

Color systems come and go. Any color system exists to provide a common
reference between persons and thus to effect precise descriptions and
facilitate communication. It is an irony that when the common point of
reference is not at hand, the confusion may be worse than if there had been no
attempt to describe the color in any terms other than the most banal. But in
the face of what seems to be willful extravagance or deliberate obfuscation in
descriptive terminology, we do well to remember that once many terms had quite
specific meanings, often ones that made perfectly good sense, from which they
have become separated.

Anner Whitehead, Richmond, VA
Henry Hall  henryanner@aol.com
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