all in line
aligned
midnight blue
dove grey
forest green
petal pink
crimson coral
I’ve cited
I’ve cleaned
i’ve imagined
I’ve inventoried
colors in Dorothy cloaks
colors in poetry manuscripts
image Dorothy cloaks Shaker Museum
Prismatic Utopia, poetry manuscript
color collected:
Stephen L. Wolf Collection
Memorial Library, Historic Deerfield
……………………………………
color as pie charts
dots blots
color as time keepers
palette makers
color as gridded groups
accented accidents
color as prism percussions
regulated registers
color as absolute attributes
sequenced saturations
color as consumer consensus
compasses quandaries
color as faceted philosophies
fascinating phenomena
color as tangents into treatises
notions into nomenclatures
color collected
……………………………………………………………
—Munsel, Munsel Book of Color
—Rimington, The Art of Mobile Colour
—Chevreul, Chevreul on Colors
—Chevreul, Des Couleurs
—Hay, Nomenclature of Colours
—Hitchcock, Religion of Geology
—Birren, Color for Interiors
—Field, Field’s Chromatography for Artists
—Gaspard, Theorie des couleurs
—Bustanoby, Principles of Color Mixing
—Walch, Color Source Book
—Jones, Grammar of Ornament
—The Painter’s Handbook
—Wolf Flow Colors, Wolf & Son’s Paints
………………………………………………………………
Thanks Memorial Library/Historic Deerfield for fruitful fabulous fellowship to examine the Stephen L Wolf color book collection.
NOTE: Application deadline for the 2026/7 Memorial Library Fellowship due April 3, 2026
ot all color research is in color
it all started with Newton
celebrating
black & white
circles
diagrams
charts
images
from the Stephen L Wolf Collection
aka over 1,200 books on colour
at Historic Deerfield Memorial
Library Special Collections
--Sir Isaac Newton, OPTICKS: A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light, 1718
--OPTICKS, rainbows in landscape, note tufts of grass
--Ogden Rood, Students Text-book on Color, 1881
--Chevreul, The laws and contrast of colors, 1859, 3D!
--Vanderwalker, The Mixing of Colors and Paints, 1924
--Bonnie Snow and Hugo Froehlich, The Theory and Practice of Color, 1920
--Albert Munsell, A Grammar of Color, edited by Faber Birren, 1969
--Chevreul, Des couleurs et des leurs applications, 1864.
--J W Mausury, Hints on House Painting, 1868, and the invention of the paint can!
--Mrs. Merrifield’s the first to translate Cennino Cennini into English, 1844
& ends with Newton’s Sun Beam from OPTICKS
[all images from the books in the Stephen L. Wolf Collection, Memorial Library, Historic Deerfield]
Color begins to line up this week
Into rectangles and squares
Into thin lines
Into grids
.
Mills, The Painter’s Handbook, 1887
Jorgensen, The Mastery of Color, 1906
Bonnie Snow & Hugo Froehlich, The Theory and Practice of Color, 192
Cleland, A Grammar of Color Arrangements, 1921
Elizabeth Burris-Meyer, Historical Color Guide, 1938
Faber Birren, Color for Interiors Historical and Modern, 1963
Maerz, A Dictionary of Color
All found in books from the Stephen L. Wolf Collection at Memorial Library, Historic Deerfield.
This week, I’ve been ‘touching Colours,’ to quote the first book seen–John Hoofnail’s 1764 ‘The Painter’s Companion –found in the amazing Stephen L. Wolf Collection at Historic Deerfield Memorial Library.
Wolf owned and operated S. Wolf’s & Sons, a NYC family business began in 1869. He built the premier private library on all things color and paint and varnish and theory, including Newton, Syme, David Hay, George Field, Chevreul, Munsell, Burris-Meyer—just to name a few.
I am so thankful for my Library Research Fellowship to use the Wolf Collection for my project Prismatic Utopia. Reading these books will further situate the Shaker’s cutting-edge use of color in the early 1800s, during the age of ‘harmonious colour.’
Images
--Field, Chromatic Equivalents
--Hay, The Laws of Harmonious Colouing
--Kyan, Elements of Light
--Church, Colour
--Syme, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
--Hay, Nomenclature of Colours
--Masury’s Ready-made paints
--Chevreul, Des Couleurs
--Bacon, Theory of Colouring
--Field’s, Chromatography
--Hoofnail, The Painter’s Companion
Find more information on the Library Fellowships, here
a scheme of colors
A project; a contrivance; a plan of something to be done; a design. Thus we may say to form, a scheme, to lay a scheme, to contrive.
A representation of the aspects of the celestial bodies.
I’m scheming in colors.
I’m arranging folders.
I’m packing poems into suitcases.
I’m lining up little watercolor tins
I’ll be scheming in colors as a Library Research Fellow
at Historic Deerfield using their Wolf Color book collection
[Moses Harris, ‘scheme of colours’ found in Alexandra Loske’s ‘The Book of Colour Concepts ]
[scheme definition 1828 Websters]
dive into each color
drop into rooms skyed
stand on floors ochred
wind swifts chromed
wheel barrows greened
impromptu
studio still lives
hilma postcards
pigment processes
morning quick collages
harris tweed color considerations
movement
rocking
rusty red cradles
painted the colors of fallen leaves
body
washed and enshrouded in
garment of celestial gold
shimmers
shines, alights
hoist
onto chrome green bier
green symbolizes growth
movements
not static
all is concert
last year after attending
Cradled at Shaker Museum,
I wrote the above poem, ‘movement’
Cradled is now on view at
Make Hauser & Wirth LA
image, The Shakers A World in the Making, Vitra Design Museum
decoding colors
how many colors in each poem?
where are the rainbows?
blues greens golds
yellows browns chartreuse
pink reds and maroons
color decoding
workrooms now stilled
the swirling tasks
wound round
glowing as
fluorescent sunshine
Farewell Fruitlands. Thanks to all at Fruitlands and The Trustees and all that visited 'anything but drab' over the last six months. So grateful.
’anything but drab’ on view
(4 more days) thru Sunday Nov 2
Fruitlands Museum,Harvard, MA
open Thursday to Sunday, 10am-4pm
big thanks to Curator Christie Jackson
for inviting me to collaborate with her
& to make a project in a former
Shaker building
--thanks to the Trustees ARC staff aka Archives
--thanks to Fruitlands Stewardship team
--thanks to all the behind the scenes Trustees staff & The Trustees
--thanks to Kate Wool for the stunning photographs
.
thanks to everyone that stopped by
to view the exhibition,
to fold paper into books,
to watch me dip my hands in an indigo dye bath,
to listen to poetry and
to hear us talk about color.
I'm so grateful. Thank you.
