Color Me Sumac

I am wearing a sweater that I made myself. The quality of knitting and the pattern style are unremarkable, but the color is glorious. The color is rich and vibrant. It is the color of autumn and warmth and the harvest. It is the color of fallen leaves in New England around October. It is one of my favorite colors. And I have not a clue what this color is called.

The label from the yarn is not enlightening. It tells me that the yarn is from Dye Lot 870 and it is color #610. It also announces that I have purchased the finest 100% cotton yarn available on earth (for what it cost, I could have bought some acreage and grown my own cotton). But what is the name of this color?

It is darker and redder than an Irish Setter, but not as orange as Persimmon. My 60s era Crayola box included a color named "Bittersweet" - it is in that family, but a shade browner. It does not have a wine-hue like Pomegranate, but is lighter than Mahogany. It is not rusty like Fox or yellow like Chinese Lantern. It is, I believe, the color of dried winter berries...it is Sumac.

I like to think that I have strong color-naming skills (perhaps, genius). I credit a childhood preoccupation with oil paint-by-numbers (made prior to the discovery that children like the smell of turpentine). I adored all of those tiny little pots of color I painted onto wedges of outlined and numbered canvas.

Colors named "Slate" and "Pine" and "Flesh". A hundred varying shades of "Chestnut", "Umber" and "Sienna" went into the intricate detail of my "Stallions in the Field". Rose pinks and spring greens combined to create my garden masterpiece, "The Sea of Tranquility."

But, back in the day, I could identify colors according to their names. I knew, then, what to expect from Aqua, Magenta and Bronze. I could anticipate the way in which a Sapphire Blue, a Royal Blue and a Navy Blue might differ from one another. Since my paint-by-number period, however, color naming has become so obscure that I'm losing my grip on the color wheel.

Have you ever done any catalogue or online shopping (she asked, confident in the answer)? Did you ever see an item that struck your fancy...say, a jacket...and read that it was available in "Wind", "Siamese", "Nutria", "Shingle" and "Punch" (the "Monsoon" being no longer available)? Have you ever squinted at your monitor and tried to distinguish 'twixt "Parchment", "Tofu", "Eggshell", "Marshmallow", "Bichon Frise", "Paste" and "Jicama" and concluded that you were really looking at a sort of white?

Sometimes the creative descriptions are decipherable through word association if you don't get too specific. We have a fairly good idea that "Siamese" is a warm, beige color as long as we don't need to know if it's Lilac Point, Seal Point, or Chocolate Point.

A color associated with fermented grapes like Merlot, Claret or Burgundy can be roughly expected to be reddish-purple. We can make the inner leap from an object to an abstract idea of color and land in the neighborhood of agreed upon expectations.

"Bermuda" must be a variation on turquoise and "Pond" ought to be some shade of soft blue. But I start to lose consciousness when catalogues tell me that the fleece vest is available in Breeze, Tropic or Lush, the nail polish is Waitress Toenails Red and the car is Parisienne. Is that comforter a Light Breeze or a Dark Breeze? And those towels shown in Deep Orangutan...is the bath sheet available in the coordinating "Arugula?"

Who, I ask you (rhetorically, of course), is so fortunate as to have a job assigning names to the colors of products? And...how can I get that job? At one time, I believed that color-naming was a random sort of activity generated by copy editors of the J. Peterman catalogue variety. I imagined a circle of people with good vocabularies and a pitcher of martinis sitting around a table. In my vision, one person from marketing holds up an object - say a bath mat - and shouts, "What color is THIS?" The slammed intern from accounting tries to focus, wobbles, cries out, "It's PENGUIN!" and collapses back in his chair from his creative effort.

I secretly fantasized to be in this group, nodding at merchandise and pronouncing, "You are "Kidney"! "You are "Proton"! "You are "Swordfish"! "You are "Sprout" with an accent of "Etruscan"! Oh, the power to proclaim that a color is "Mulch" and to discover that one has created the signature color of the season. As in "'Mulch' is very BIG this year, along with any color in the Compost Palette." Within twenty minutes, everything from cars to couches to cashmere will be available in "Mulch.". And I (ha - ha - ha - ha - ha) made it so.

But, as you have already anticipated, it doesn't quite work that way. I will remain a talented, but impotent, color namer unless I find employment with one of the �berlords of color such as the Institute of Color Research.

ICR (and companies like it) studies how color affects and directs the purchasing decisions of consumers. They are responsible for all of that color naming obscurity. You aren't buying a shade of "Toast" when you buy your organic hemp and cotton blend sheets - you are buying a complex whole-grain marketing concept.

Designers of all kinds as well as manufacturers of everything from paint to Pontiacs do not, as a rule, choose any old color that catches their fancy. Rodney in marketing did not introduce cobalt blue for this year's portable electronics with out being pretty darn certain that potential buyers found cobalt blue desirable.

Rodney hired the ICR to determine the consumer market's response to that particular saturated deep blue. The ICR is one of the tastemakers of color. It analyzes and archives, trend - spots, combines and distributes the colors that we consumers are drawn to like Bower Birds making a nest.

Ever wonder where that particular shade of green - sort of an apple - chartreuse - lime - pea green blend - last seen in the 1950s went to? You thought that it was an extinct green, but now it's back with a vengeance and we can't get enough of it? We don't even want the merchandise; we just want to surround ourselves with this fantastic color. Is this just a coincidence? Did someone just happen to find this abandoned color in a bureau somewhere (like a lost play of Shakespeare's) and say, "By golly...this green. Let's call it...I don't know..."Kiwi" and let's market it!" Sort of. Almost.

Humans sense color through three sets of sensors (Rho, Gamma and Beta) cumulatively called "rods" that are spread throughout the retina. Each receptor is sensitive to a particular wavelength in the visual color spectrum (Rho senses red; Gamma senses green; Beta senses blue).* The sensitivity and number of the receptors varies between individuals and determines the intensity of the colors that are perceived. If you can distinguish Saffron from Squash without hesitation, you probably have a surplus of rods with which to play.

Presumably, color sensitivity, especially in low light, has a huge positive evolutionary benefit for human - kind. That is, if we can distinguish the wildebeest in the foliage at dusk, we have a better chance of spearing the rascal because, lord knows, we can't out run it.

However, scientists who muck about in visible spectrums and electromagnetic spectrums are not especially good at explaining to us why we prefer the Tree Frog Green iPod over the Catfish Grey iPod (the grey one, by the by, is $40 cheaper because no one likes it). Your preferences for certain colors may have some sort of survival component, but you didn't choose the green iPod so you could hide from predators in the rain forest and listen to your tunes at the same time. Seeing the iPod hanging in its little #1 plastic sarcophagus at the electronics store may have stimulated your Gamma receptors to frenzy, but unseen forces guided you into purchasing the green one.

According to ICR, humans make a subconscious judgment about an item within 90 seconds of the initial viewing - 62% to 90% of that assessment is based on the response to the color alone. ICR is dedicated to selling color and its consulting expertise includes color forecasting, color merchandising, catalogue coloration (my specialty) and product development color specification. In short, our evolutionary gift of color is being tweaked and manipulated every time we blink.

If you need proof in your own environment, look around you at all of the stuff that's suddenly pink. Some clever color people correctly tied in the current heightened awareness of breast cancer and its signature light pink with a market interest in all things pink (and not just ANY pink - Breast Cancer Awareness Pink). One can now purchase small appliances, like mixers, in a color that very few consumers, heretofore, would have found appealing.

Consider the color on your walls. Is it "dated"? Are you considering repainting so that your home will appear more modern? How do colors go from delightful to dowdy; fashionable to seriously frumpy? Why did you not know, five years ago, that you really liked "Pear" (both the greenish "D'Anjou" and the more yellow "Bosq")? Why did you choose "Sage" for the draperies when you now see that "Fig" is so much more vibrant? Why, oh why? Because no one was manipulating your taste towards "Pear" five years back and you were being pushed toward "Versailles Blue" or "Harbour Mist" or whatever hue the ICR had trotted out for trend colors that year that were then translated into paint, upholstery fabrics and domestic accessories.

Even colors that were retired (from the decade that spawned colors too hideous to revisit) enjoy a revival. No one conscious in the 1970s can forget Harvest Gold, Coppertone and Avocado. Cleverly, they have all been renamed (in sort of a color witness protection program) and have reentered our visual field as Sunflower, Mocha and Artichoke. Many of us are willing to throw out the working washer/dryer combo in 80s "Almond" just so we can look at a different color...say, stainless steel (which, FYI, is becoming pass� with the introduction of new metallic finishes, including one that looks suspiciously like a more iridescent Coppertone ).

Will it end anywhere? Nope. It's much too important to the very serious business of consumer marketing. ICR uses art, science, research, technology and psychology to advance the selling power of all that you see (including Breast Cancer Awareness Pink). You are powerless to resist this, so don't bother trying.

Myself? I can give colors obscure names as well as anyone else. While I wait for my dream job at ICR, I am developing my portfolio. Currently, I'm creating a Late Mesozoic color palette (talk about "retro") that includes "Apatosauraus" and "Triceratops". For Spring, my "Cataclysmic" color line will be intense. My stuff will be available in "Quake", "Plague", "Virus" and "Annihilation". Unfortunately, "Pox" is already sold out.

* Red - green color blindness occurs when there is an overlapping of the Rho and Gamma sensor curves or an inadequate number of sensors (in case you wanted to know that).

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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