The Harvard Library That Protects The World's Rarest Colors
March 24, 2016 4:52 PM Subscribe
Oh please let Mummy Brown be the next Pantone Color of the Year.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:34 PM on March 24, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:34 PM on March 24, 2016 [5 favorites]
Ah, cadmiums. Lovely colors. Deadly, sure, but very, very lovely. No mention of lead white?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:13 PM on March 24, 2016
posted by Thorzdad at 6:13 PM on March 24, 2016
Oh, Harvard, is there nothing odd you don't own?
A book bound in human skin? Of course.
The skull of a guy who had an iron rod driven though his head - and the iron rod? Natch.
Preserved goiters? Certainly.
A Mexican tortilla chip from 1897? You bet.
posted by adamg at 6:49 PM on March 24, 2016 [4 favorites]
A book bound in human skin? Of course.
The skull of a guy who had an iron rod driven though his head - and the iron rod? Natch.
Preserved goiters? Certainly.
A Mexican tortilla chip from 1897? You bet.
posted by adamg at 6:49 PM on March 24, 2016 [4 favorites]
Nice! I truly wonder if mummy brown was in any way an interesting color to paint with, or if was more the exclusivity and mystique. Seems like it would be "ancient embalming fluid brown" more than anything.
posted by Secretariat at 6:54 PM on March 24, 2016
posted by Secretariat at 6:54 PM on March 24, 2016
Sheele's Green - the single most beautiful verdant shade chemistry has bestowed to commercial pigment, luminous and compelling! Modern historians wanting to look at a dress or a scrap of wallpaper in Schloss Green must do so while wearing a hazmat suit - that color is obtained by making an acidic compound of arsenic and copper. Lots of people died a curious, untimely death in beautifully wallpapered rooms.
Sadly missing from the article, but since we are talking about shades we can no longer behold with modern eyes, I thought I would bring it up here.
Also, uranium glass! We should also talk about glass infused with uranium so it would all but glow green! Supergreen! (And now you know something about The Fifth Element you did not before.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:59 PM on March 24, 2016 [8 favorites]
Sadly missing from the article, but since we are talking about shades we can no longer behold with modern eyes, I thought I would bring it up here.
Also, uranium glass! We should also talk about glass infused with uranium so it would all but glow green! Supergreen! (And now you know something about The Fifth Element you did not before.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:59 PM on March 24, 2016 [8 favorites]
(Yes, I made that last part up about the Fifth Element, but still.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:02 PM on March 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:02 PM on March 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Pragmatic Costumer on "poison green" and other toxic dyes in the Victorian era.
posted by metaquarry at 7:26 PM on March 24, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by metaquarry at 7:26 PM on March 24, 2016 [4 favorites]
A book bound in human skin? Of course.
For years everyone thought the Bancroft Library at Berkeley had one too, but peptide mass fingerprinting recently confirmed that it's horse hide. You win this round, Harvard! This... creepy, unsettling round of library wars.
Anyway, the Harvard libraries are awesome. I had no idea about the pigment library. Super cool. Thanks for posting this!
posted by teponaztli at 11:07 PM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
For years everyone thought the Bancroft Library at Berkeley had one too, but peptide mass fingerprinting recently confirmed that it's horse hide. You win this round, Harvard! This... creepy, unsettling round of library wars.
Anyway, the Harvard libraries are awesome. I had no idea about the pigment library. Super cool. Thanks for posting this!
posted by teponaztli at 11:07 PM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
My favorite weird colour is Indian Yellow. It's gorgeous: a rich and vibrant transparent yellow, made in this one small Indian village where they feed cows on mango leaves and collect their urine. The urine is boiled down to make the pigment. Or so said Mr. T.N. Mukharji of Calcutta who was apparently taking the piss in a more metaphoric way: mango leaves are poisonous, and the pigment doesn't have the traces of ammonia that you would expect if his story were true.
The authentic pigment has been unavailable (apart from historic samples in museums) for nearly a century, but this guy has recreated Indian Yellow based on what we know, and it is indeed a very nice color.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:11 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
The authentic pigment has been unavailable (apart from historic samples in museums) for nearly a century, but this guy has recreated Indian Yellow based on what we know, and it is indeed a very nice color.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:11 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
Very interesting! - thanks Brandon. The link from the article to the one at the Harvard Gazette (A wall of color, a window to the past) is worth following as well.
posted by misteraitch at 12:41 AM on March 25, 2016
posted by misteraitch at 12:41 AM on March 25, 2016
For years everyone thought the Bancroft Library at Berkeley had one too, but peptide mass fingerprinting recently confirmed that it's horse hide. You win this round, Harvard! This... creepy, unsettling round of library wars.
When donating your bod(y/ies) to science, please keep library science in your thoughts. (Very few patrons ever tick off that little box on their card.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:10 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
When donating your bod(y/ies) to science, please keep library science in your thoughts. (Very few patrons ever tick off that little box on their card.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:10 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
Please do not disabuse me of the notion that these collections come about as a result of end-of-fiscal-year, use-it-or-lose-it funding gluts that get the rest of us new office copiers and ergonomic chairs.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:43 AM on March 25, 2016
posted by backseatpilot at 5:43 AM on March 25, 2016
→ We should also talk about glass infused with uranium so it would all but glow green! Supergreen!
Uranium (or “vaseline”) glass really does fluoresce in sunlight, and insanely so under UV. Wander into your local thrift store with a small UV flashlight, and a quick pass over the glassware section will find a few samples. They're mildly radioactive, and will make a geiger counter tick just a little faster. Uranium glass is also popular amongst the blacklight crowd for making bongs.
posted by scruss at 7:19 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Uranium (or “vaseline”) glass really does fluoresce in sunlight, and insanely so under UV. Wander into your local thrift store with a small UV flashlight, and a quick pass over the glassware section will find a few samples. They're mildly radioactive, and will make a geiger counter tick just a little faster. Uranium glass is also popular amongst the blacklight crowd for making bongs.
posted by scruss at 7:19 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm kind of boggled they have them sitting out on unprotected shelves. Massachusetts doesn't get earthquakes often, but they can happen, and suddenly your precious collection is a heap of powders and glass on the floor. Why aren't they in racks at the very least?
posted by tavella at 11:27 AM on March 25, 2016
posted by tavella at 11:27 AM on March 25, 2016
It looks like the shelves are behind glass doors.
posted by teponaztli at 10:08 PM on March 25, 2016
posted by teponaztli at 10:08 PM on March 25, 2016
See also: The Eclipse of Titan optical illusion, which produces a shade of cyan so difficult to see in the real world because for most of us, our retinal cones don't recognize it, and our computer monitors can't really reproduce it.
posted by not_on_display at 5:22 PM on April 8, 2016
posted by not_on_display at 5:22 PM on April 8, 2016
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posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:34 PM on March 24, 2016 [1 favorite]