is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger. She loves convincing people that they can read English secretary hand and sharing quirky and unexpected collection finds and stories. — View all posts by Heather Wolfe
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I love this sort of thing beyond measure. I love colors, the names of colors, knowing what substances were used to produce them, and what substances lent their own names–for being considered the very type of a color.
I love trying to understand how the eye perceives things, and why we revel in some.
I love the minutely specific terms used by those most involved with what is being named—Once everyone would have known multiple terms for the many kinds of geographical landscapes because humans were of the land & needed to describe places, and traveling between them, by land-mark rather than maps or sign-posts.
There’s not just sadness, but danger in losing such precise terms because of the loss of attention to things in their sacred specificity.
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.” Rilke
I think that now any depth of vocabulary belongs to experts who need the specialisation for tools of their trade—-which can also be fun. Like color for artists.
And I like lists.
I wonder whether I might quote a lot of this article in a post on my blog?
[Where I’ve stored up little bits of such knowledge:
I’m delighted you liked Heather’s post–it’s so evocative for just the reasons you name. And you’re more than welcome to quote excerpts from it, as long as you attribute it to Heather and link back to it on The Collation. We license the blog under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non-Commercial license for precisely these reasons!
Absolutely—Thank you—All attributions, always.
I find it both maddening & —immoral, really, when things float around the web without credit being given to the source.
For another beautiful early modern color palette, see British Library Sloane MS 2052. It has been fully digitized. Here’s a link to one of the pages, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=sloane_ms_2052_f081r, and a link to the whole document, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_2052 (see especially fols 80 and 81).
Wonderful—- I think I might have seen that image before, but what was going on, and who was involved, make it not just significant but exciting.
I love the mixing of disciplines there was when everyone was so eager to understand the world (what a radical difference with today; first scientists became isolated–and them, somehow, scorned!)
It was a physician who wrote the ‘Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his Sight, so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen’ in the post I linked to above: “Scarlet he thought the most beautiful of all colours”
I am very excited by early modern attitudes to colour and am half way through my PhD looking at colour in Shakespeare as a means to express emotion. The reproductions of the manuscripts are amazing and are provoking many fascinating thoughts for my research. Many thanks
I love this post more than I can say. I spent two or three days during my time at the Folger this past summer trying to figure out what color “hair coloured” was, as I was working on hair lace bracelets and it had come up in descriptions of textiles (i.e. “A suite of hair-colored veluet”. I couldn’t figure out whether it was a grayish brown (i.e. “hare” color) or the color of human hair. I finally found the answer in Jane Lawson’s glossary to Elizabethan New Years’ Gift exchange: beige, supposedly the color of flaxen hair.
Comments
I love this sort of thing beyond measure. I love colors, the names of colors, knowing what substances were used to produce them, and what substances lent their own names–for being considered the very type of a color.
I love trying to understand how the eye perceives things, and why we revel in some.
I love the minutely specific terms used by those most involved with what is being named—Once everyone would have known multiple terms for the many kinds of geographical landscapes because humans were of the land & needed to describe places, and traveling between them, by land-mark rather than maps or sign-posts.
There’s not just sadness, but danger in losing such precise terms because of the loss of attention to things in their sacred specificity.
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.” Rilke
I think that now any depth of vocabulary belongs to experts who need the specialisation for tools of their trade—-which can also be fun. Like color for artists.
And I like lists.
I wonder whether I might quote a lot of this article in a post on my blog?
[Where I’ve stored up little bits of such knowledge:
https://secretgardening.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/2076/]
Goethe defined color as “the deeds and sufferings of light”
Cassandra Silver — January 13, 2015
I’m delighted you liked Heather’s post–it’s so evocative for just the reasons you name. And you’re more than welcome to quote excerpts from it, as long as you attribute it to Heather and link back to it on The Collation. We license the blog under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non-Commercial license for precisely these reasons!
Sarah Werner — January 14, 2015
Absolutely—Thank you—All attributions, always.
I find it both maddening & —immoral, really, when things float around the web without credit being given to the source.
Cassandra Silver — January 15, 2015
For another beautiful early modern color palette, see British Library Sloane MS 2052. It has been fully digitized. Here’s a link to one of the pages, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=sloane_ms_2052_f081r, and a link to the whole document, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_2052 (see especially fols 80 and 81).
Heather Wolfe — January 14, 2015
Wonderful—- I think I might have seen that image before, but what was going on, and who was involved, make it not just significant but exciting.
I love the mixing of disciplines there was when everyone was so eager to understand the world (what a radical difference with today; first scientists became isolated–and them, somehow, scorned!)
It was a physician who wrote the ‘Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his Sight, so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen’ in the post I linked to above: “Scarlet he thought the most beautiful of all colours”
Cassandra Silver — January 15, 2015
[…] An early modern color guide | The Collation – e Depot and Lowes, each with a unique name: sangria, ballet slipper, arctic, etc. These na […]
Bookmarks for January 15th through January 16th | Chris's Digital Detritus — January 16, 2015
I am very excited by early modern attitudes to colour and am half way through my PhD looking at colour in Shakespeare as a means to express emotion. The reproductions of the manuscripts are amazing and are provoking many fascinating thoughts for my research. Many thanks
Brid Phillips — January 23, 2015
I love this post more than I can say. I spent two or three days during my time at the Folger this past summer trying to figure out what color “hair coloured” was, as I was working on hair lace bracelets and it had come up in descriptions of textiles (i.e. “A suite of hair-colored veluet”. I couldn’t figure out whether it was a grayish brown (i.e. “hare” color) or the color of human hair. I finally found the answer in Jane Lawson’s glossary to Elizabethan New Years’ Gift exchange: beige, supposedly the color of flaxen hair.
Miriam Jacobson — January 24, 2015
I’m also hoping you’ve all seen this one: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/05/color-book/
Miriam Jacobson — January 24, 2015