Vendors unleashed

Our house is always demanding that we spend money on it. If we do not, it threatens to find some new way to torture us by falling apart somewhere, or by failing to function in some manner. So, anticipating a future need for parting with some unknown amount of money, we recently attended a historic home and craftsmen show to gather ideas for how that money might be applied.

The show featured vendors of various products for the historic home, including flooring, cabinetry, window solutions, gutter guards that you absolutely need because without them your home is doomed to water damage and you will fall off a ladder trying to clean out the gutters and will end up paralyzed and bitter, etc.

The trick at these types of shows, we quickly learned, is getting the information you need while avoiding the appearance of too much interest in the vendor's product or service, which is when the trouble begins. Another important trick -- VERY important, in our opinion -- is to get a sufficient number of free sample of cookies or whatever treat is being offered at a particular booth.

The next couple of posts will highlight some of the presentations we attended and the craftspeople we met.

Dr. Color

Despite a sign in his booth advertising that "Dr. Color is always in," we never saw the distinguished doctor in his booth. We did, however, attend his session on historic colors, or at least I did, as the Hero quickly lost interest and wandered away to investigate more free samples of Chocolate Peanut Clusters from Booth 73.

The color talk centered on "master colors," a collection of paint colors from the 19th century used by "master painters," whose job basically was to protect the "master colors." To keep these colors secret, master painters used a number to refer to each color, because if they had used names like we do today, someone might have figured out the secret formula to, say, "greenish drab." (Later, feeling pressured to use names instead of numbers, a certain company really did offer a color called "greenish drab," which we suspect is what the former owners of our home used.)

Dr. Color decried the practice that has become common among paint companies of naming colors not based on any reflection of the actual color, but rather to evoke a mood, or something that will have meaning for the customer. This has resulted in, for instance, instead of "medium brown," "weekend in the country." What might be next? "Rainy day in Chicago"? "Where, oh where, has my little dog gone?"

Such nonsense has led Dr. Color to come down squarely on the side of using numbers for colors instead of names.

There is another issue to consider with using such names for colors, and that is how we would teach them to young children. To understand "weekend in the country" as a color, the would have to know what "the country" is, and what a "weekend" is. Even that might not help all that much. Would it not be far better to stick to names that kids can readily identify with? Perhaps Grumpy Teacher or Drabbish Desk.

Dr. Color gave us no easy answers for these pressing issues. By the end of his presentation I felt the need to act, and so I went in search of some Chocolate Peanut Clusters.

Next: Where have all the houses gone?