A couple of new color names followed the release of the movies, Gone With The Wind and My Fair Lady: Lawdy Miss Scarlet, and 'Enry 'Iggins Just You White.
Your essays always send my brain off in about 5 different directions. (Come back, please! It’s hard enough thinking straight as it is.)
I’m reminded of research into why babies say so many animal names when they’re learning to talk. Turns out that animals are what adult caregivers draw their attention to!
Pantone: I assume you’ve heard about their dust-up with Adobe that means anyone who uses Pantone colors for design now has to pay a monthly subscription fee, and this applies even to designs that were created years ago?
Ownership is wrong, I don’t care how orange my Fiskar scissors are.
Snowbonk needs to be a THING. As a color name it’s hopeless but as a weather phenomenon? Priceless.
Please note that I am filing a cease and desist order over your use of Sowden's Bane as it is utterly indistinguishable from Jensen's Jazz, soon to be in Chanel's Spring Color collection thereby making me very rich.
Perhaps you could do something more with Bank Butt.
Thank you, Mike! And inevitably you've now sent me down the rabbit hole after William Harrison… Meanwhile, I'm sure lots of us here would eagerly snap up your branded merchandise in vibrant Sowden's Bane.
Oh Mike. I LOVE this post. Sowdens Bane is a mid-summer sky here in Australia!
Love the colour names. They're as funky as a wonderful list of medieval fabrics I found many years ago (and have been searching for ever since!)
I wonder too, why it is that I gravitate always to blues and taupes. I live on the coast and have been a sea person all my life. Is it in the DNA? Is it psychological? Do I feel a message of 'home' when I have clothes, furnishings, embroidery in those colours?
Whatever the case, this post is marvellous and thank you for this year's journey. Have a safe and happy holiday and come back with wonderful things to read next year!
Hilarious, as always! Some of those names! I’m intrigued by the warm and cool color thing, because in all of my various sets of art materials (colored pencils, pens, oil pastels) I have vastly more blues and greens than all my warm colors combined. There’s just so many cool shades of blue and green! With oil pastels, you can definitely invent your own colors all the time because you just blend them all together and really that’s the fun of it, and while we’re at it, one thing you notice in nature is that nothing is a solid color. This is why a color painted on a wall never looks real to me, because nothing in nature would be so flat, and without highlight and shadow nuances, along with shades of colors. Long live Sowdens Bane, lol. 
This made me think about the naming of lipstick shades and cosmetics. And the idea of the Tiffany blue and Yves Klein. There's also a brilliant piece in the Paris Review about the slippery world of green-blue, a must read on this colour exploration you're deep into: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/11/24/verdigris-the-color-of-oxidation-statues-and-impermanence/
A couple of new color names followed the release of the movies, Gone With The Wind and My Fair Lady: Lawdy Miss Scarlet, and 'Enry 'Iggins Just You White.
🤣 I was *95%* sure this was just a witticism but I did have to go Google it, because how glorious would that be?
Well played, Walter.
Sowden’s Bane is the official color of 2023! 💙
Your essays always send my brain off in about 5 different directions. (Come back, please! It’s hard enough thinking straight as it is.)
I’m reminded of research into why babies say so many animal names when they’re learning to talk. Turns out that animals are what adult caregivers draw their attention to!
Pantone: I assume you’ve heard about their dust-up with Adobe that means anyone who uses Pantone colors for design now has to pay a monthly subscription fee, and this applies even to designs that were created years ago?
Ownership is wrong, I don’t care how orange my Fiskar scissors are.
Snowbonk needs to be a THING. As a color name it’s hopeless but as a weather phenomenon? Priceless.
Hahah - wonderful!
Please note that I am filing a cease and desist order over your use of Sowden's Bane as it is utterly indistinguishable from Jensen's Jazz, soon to be in Chanel's Spring Color collection thereby making me very rich.
Perhaps you could do something more with Bank Butt.
Fun read Mike! I remember coming up with this creative campaign for our national tourism board here in Lithuania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnj8fpNQJgk
It was all about made-up colours! We had Cold Pink, Rye Bread Black, Baltic Blue :)
Thank you, Mike! And inevitably you've now sent me down the rabbit hole after William Harrison… Meanwhile, I'm sure lots of us here would eagerly snap up your branded merchandise in vibrant Sowden's Bane.
Oh Mike. I LOVE this post. Sowdens Bane is a mid-summer sky here in Australia!
Love the colour names. They're as funky as a wonderful list of medieval fabrics I found many years ago (and have been searching for ever since!)
I wonder too, why it is that I gravitate always to blues and taupes. I live on the coast and have been a sea person all my life. Is it in the DNA? Is it psychological? Do I feel a message of 'home' when I have clothes, furnishings, embroidery in those colours?
Whatever the case, this post is marvellous and thank you for this year's journey. Have a safe and happy holiday and come back with wonderful things to read next year!
Hilarious, as always! Some of those names! I’m intrigued by the warm and cool color thing, because in all of my various sets of art materials (colored pencils, pens, oil pastels) I have vastly more blues and greens than all my warm colors combined. There’s just so many cool shades of blue and green! With oil pastels, you can definitely invent your own colors all the time because you just blend them all together and really that’s the fun of it, and while we’re at it, one thing you notice in nature is that nothing is a solid color. This is why a color painted on a wall never looks real to me, because nothing in nature would be so flat, and without highlight and shadow nuances, along with shades of colors. Long live Sowdens Bane, lol. 
Educational, entertaining and fun! Thank you.
Another fascinating and fun post! Cross posted so others can enjoy it. Best wishes for 2023.