The Library of Rare Colors

(Turns out I'd previously posted an article about this Harvard library. No matter, because the video is a bit more interactive than the article is.)

This is one of Tom's rarer videos in that he barely talks during it. He introduces and closes the video but largely lets the Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies explain the organization of, history of, and depth and breadth of their collection of color standards.

A few years back, the ASM summer camp in Indianapolis (RIP the Indy camp, apparently) got to tour the labs at the Indianapolis Art Museum and got a glimpse of a much smaller pigment collection that they used there to help determine the provenance of artworks but knowing when certain pigments came into popular use. If a pigment from a painting was first used in the 1820's, for example, it's unlikely to have been in a painting claimed to have been done by Titian.

The Venn diagram in my head between art and material science continues to grow.