I love random posts like these that make stop and think to puzzle out the meaning. The granddaughter, daughter, sister, and aunt of paint manufacturers, I have long loved technical language.
I remember learning nomenclature as requisites for canoeing and archery, biology, plane geometry, scene design. Nomenclature: the naming of things in a discipline. Like ballast.
Or fan deck -- a hinged palette as beautiful as any Japanese fan.
Reaching for a light bulb on a high shelf late this afternoon, I re-discovered a relic -- an Indurall fan deck. The company has morphed since its start -- from Industrial Paint Manufacturing Company, to Indurall Paints, to Induron Protective Coatings. Once a maker of industrial paints for a booming manufacturing city (Birmingham, Alabama), it later opened retail stores where folks bought paint and wallpaper, and even later became a niche coatings manufacturer of specialty products made to order.
Sometimes I miss the old days when I could open the current Indurall fan deck, select a color, and have it made by members of my family and folks who worked with and for them. I'd spend hours rearranging the deck, perusing colors like Della Robbia, Tortoise Shell, Old Lace, Relish, Document.
I once read an article about colorists, whose job it is to name paint colors. Imagine spending one's days writing nomenclature for something that brings joy or calm to others.
As a child, I loved going onto the floor of the paint factory, where great tubs held paint in process, the large paddles turning and turning pigments like a giant Kitchenmaid mixer. Joe Locaccio had the expert eye: give him a piece of fabric or an object, and he could match it perfectly. There was a time when I wanted to grow up and be him, paint-splattered shoes and pants and shirt and cap.
These mostly anonymous folks -- the chemists, the tinters, the namers -- practice random acts of color every day. What a lovely way to make a living.
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