University of Virginia Library

Occasionally a bibliographer describing pre-nineteenth-century books will include information on bindings, especially if he is describing the particular copies in a given collection; see, for example, Allan Stevenson's discussion in his introduction to the eighteenth-century volume of the Hunt Botanical Catalogue, II (1961), clxxxiii-clxxxvi.

Cf. Fredson Bowers, "Purposes of Descriptive Bibliography, with Some Remarks on Methods," Library, 5th ser., VIII (1953), 4. Bowers further points out that identifying binding states may aid in detecting concealed impressions. His general discussion of the description of publishers' cloth is in Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949), pp. 446-450.

In some cases, if the finish is no longer being produced, "arbitrary symbols" have been assigned (I, xxxi). All the symbols are of course arbitrary, but some of the combinations are meaningful, given the original symbol: thus HT combines the characteristics of H ("diaper") and T ("ribbed").

This double system of nomenclature, combining a readily understood term with a more precise technical one, is parallel to the method recommended later in this article for the designation of color.

Jacob Blanck, in "A Calendar of Bibliographical Difficulties," PBSA, XLIX (1955), 1-18, reported that he had considered, for use in the BAL descriptions, both Robert Ridgway's color chart and the spectrophotometer, but he rejected both and in the end had his own eyes examined (pp. 4-6).

Leon Edel and Dan H. Laurence, A Bibliography of Henry James (1958; rev. 1961), pp. 18-19.

Another bibliography which uses a comparative method for gaining greater precision in its careful attention to color is R. L. Purdy's of Hardy (1954): after The Return of the Native is described as "brown," the secondary binding can be called "a slightly redder shade of brown" (p. 24).

Library, 5th ser., XVIII (1963), 243-245. Rota also refers to the Cahill and Stott bibliographies and remarks that B. J. Kirkpatrick's bibliography of Virginia Woolf (1957) employs terms for nine shades of green, without referring the reader to any chart or standard.

Cf. Carter, Binding Variants in English Publishing, p. 82.

TLS, 23 January 1953, p. 64.

A sketch of the history of color systems can be found, among other places, in Faber Birren, Color Dimensions (1934), pp. 4-9, and Aloys Maerz and M. Rea Paul, Dictionary of Color (2nd ed., 1950), pp. 137-144.

Also referred to as the ICI (International Commission on Illumination).

This system is discussed in all basic books on color and in many articles in the Journal of the Optical Society of America (JOSA). References to such discussions, both for the CIE system and for the other systems referred to below, will be found in the appended "Note on the Literature."

Of course, one might argue that if two bindings do in fact vary, even if they came from bolts which the manufacturer or the binder considered identical, the variations should be recorded, whether or not any question of priority is involved. And if the notion of a descriptive bibliographer's duties is extended to its ultimate limits, the argument cannot be denied. However, in practical terms it is impossible for a bibliographer to record every physical (and chemical) fact about a book; those facts must therefore be selected which have some meaning or usefulness to the persons for whom the information is being assembled. In the case of binding color, even if it were possible to determine that certain copies of a given impression of a book were bound earlier than other copies from the same bolt of material, the fact would be of no significance to the bibliographer — or the sane book-collector. On the other hand, if a slight variation in binding furnishes a clue to an interruption in the binding process that produced two binding "issues" (which may or may not coincide with two states or issues of the sheets), the fact may turn out to have bibliographical significance. The bibliographer will have to explore each case on an individual basis to determine his own tolerance limits — to determine, that is, the degree of precision beyond which he need not go in order to make meaningful discriminations.

Cf. W. D. Wright, The Measurement of Colour (3rd ed., 1964), p. 161, in which he describes how the CIE system "can, and should, be related to subjective descriptions of colour." An early statement of the ratio method is Lewis F. Richardson, "Quantitative Mental Estimates of Light and Colour," British Journal of Psychology, XX (1929), 27-37; see also Tentative Recommended Practice for Visual Evaluation of Color Differences of Opaque Materials (American Society for Testing and Materials, Method D1729-60T, 1960). Another approach, developed in the nineteenth century by James Clerk Maxwell, is to take a few basic material standards in the form of disks and spin them in various combinations until a match is attained; the proportions may be expressed in CIE terms, as Dorothy Nickerson explains in "Disk Colorimetry," JOSA, XXV (1935), 253-257. A disk-spinning motor and other equipment for disk colorimetry are available from the Munsell Color Company; but the process is too cumbersome and time-consuming to be appropriate for bibliographical purposes.

See Donald R. Dohner and Carl E. Foss, "Color-Mixing Systems: Color vs. Colorant Mixture," JOSA, XXXII (1942), 702-708; Carl E. Foss, "Color-Order Systems," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, LII (1949), 184-196; and Deane B. Judd and Günter Wyszecki, Color in Business, Science, and Industry (2nd ed., 1963), pp. 202ff.

Adrian Bernard Klein, in "The Munsell Colour System and the Need for a Standardisation of Colours," Penrose's Annual, XXIX (1927), 57-63, makes the point that no system which requires spectrophotometric equipment can be commonly accepted: "A yard-stick is not a fine micrometer, but it serves the practical purpose of measuring a piece of cloth accurately enough for ordinary use" (p. 59).

The solid would be irregularly shaped because the point of saturation for certain coloring materials at certain value levels is farther from the axis than for other materials. At the same time, the problem of the spacing of material standards is further complicated by the fact that equal perceptual differences in color do not correspond to equal distances in Euclidian space.

A booklet describing all the materials available may be obtained from the Munsell Color Company, 2441 North Calvert Street, Baltimore 21218.

This foundation, in the words of the Company's literature, exists to "further the scientific and practical advancement of color knowledge, and in particular, knowledge relating to standardization, nomenclature and specification of color; and to promote the practical application of these results to color problems arising in science, art and industry."

See Dorothy Nickerson, "Modern Color Science Is the Background for a New and Useful Color Chart for Horticulture," Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual American Horticultural Congress (October 1956), pp. 3-11. The Color Fan is distributed by the American Orchid Society, the American Horticultural Council, and the Munsell Color Company.

TLS, 25 January 1957, p. 56.

Notes and Queries, CXCVIII (1953), 452 (cf. p. 365).

Dorothy Nickerson, "Inter-Society Color Council," JOSA, XXVIII (1938), 357-359; H. P. Gage, "Color Theories and the Inter-Society Color Council," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, XXXV (1940), 361-387; William J. Kiernan, "A Story About the Inter-Society Color Council," ISCC News Letter, No. 173 (September-December 1964). The ISCC may be addressed in care of its present secretary, Mr. Ralph M. Evans, at the Photographic Technology Division, Building 65, Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester 14650.

Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, XXIII (1939), 355-385. Cf. Dorothy Nickerson, "Standardization of Color Names: The ISCC-NBS Method," American Dyestuff Reporter, XXIX (1940), 392-396.

"Renotation" refers to the adjustments made in 1943 in the original Munsell specifications. See the "Note on the Literature" below.

Of course, only the first is truly essential; for if a color is specified in terms of any published color sample, one can always refer to the sample when it becomes necessary to see precisely what color the bibliographer had in mind. The conversion to ISCC-NBS names is, from this point of view, merely a convenience to readers; but that convenience is of great importance, for a really meaningful and efficient standardization of color names cannot be achieved until all bibliographers use the same name for the same color.

Kelly, "Central Notations for the Revised ISCC-NBS Color-Name Blocks," Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, LXI (1958), 427-431. Cf. the previous calculations in Dorothy Nickerson and Sidney M. Newhall, "Central Notations for ISCC-NBS Color Names," JOSA, XXXI (1941), 587-591; and Dorothy Nickerson, "ISCC-NBS Color Names," Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society, XXII (1943), 306-310.

Kenneth L. Kelly, "The ISCC-NBS Centroid Color Charts," ISCC News Letter, No. 175 (March-April 1965), pp. 7-8. The Munsell Color Company has prepared for sale large samples of the centroid colors, in 9" x 12" sheets.

Kenneth L. Kelly, "Some Problems of Color Identification," Journal of the American Institute of Architects, XXXVII (1962), 80-82; Kelly, Coordinated Color Identifications for Industry (National Bureau of Standards Technical Note 152, November 1962); Kelly, "A Universal Color Language," Color Engineering, III (March-April 1965), 2-7.

Even a system not represented in the ISCC-NBS dictionary may be used, for the color name may still be obtained from an approximate match in the centroid charts and the more precise designation then read from the samples in the other system.

See above, footnote 14. Interpolations may also be made by spinning Maxwell disks of Munsell standard paper; see footnote 15 above.

Cf. Walter C. Granville and Egbert Jacobson, "Colorimetric Specification of the Color Harmony Manual from Spectrophotometric Measurements," JOSA, XXXIV (1944), 382-395; Granville, Carl E. Foss, and I. H. Godlove, "Color Harmony Manual: Colorimetric Analysis of Third Edition," JOSA, XL (1950), 265 (summary).

Cf. Bowers, Principles, pp. 113-123.

Judd, "Systematic Color Designations for Paper," Paper Trade Journal, CXI (17 October 1940), TS201-206.

Cf. Charles Rosner, The Growth of the Book-Jacket (1954).

Rosamond B. Loring, in Decorated Book Papers (1942; 2nd ed., edited by Philip Hofer, 1952), includes a chapter on nineteenth-century endpapers (pp. 71-80) and one on publishers' endpapers (pp. 81-90).

Library, 5th ser., VIII (1953), 22.

For their helpful letters and advice, I wish to thank Mrs. Blanche R. Bellamy, of the Munsell Color Company; Mr. Ralph M. Evans, Secretary of the Inter-Society Color Council; Mr. V. G. Grey, Secretary of Sectional Committee Z55, American Standards Association; Mr. Kenneth L. Kelly, of the National Bureau of Standards; Mr. W. J. Kiernan, Chairman of Committee E-12, American Society for Testing and Materials; Mr. Paul J. Smith, of the American Society for Testing and Materials.