“size 4, in cement”

In rearranging papers last night, I came across this color chart from the English paint company Farrow & Ball (a section, above). There are a number of reasons why this is one of my favorite things of recent era: it's a combination of taxonomy, pure aesthetics, fanciful word-names and allusive, meandering explanatory text that spurs more questions than it answers. For example, there is a color called "Monkey Puzzle," a very dark green-gray.
The description reads:

A typical 19th century estate color which has, like so many successful colours, endured down the generations. Good with both brick and stone, and indeed furniture.

"?"
Another color, “Dauphin,” I realize in hindsight, is given a very elliptical explanation:

An earth pigment colour in the early 18th century school of ‘drab’

First, “school of ‘drab’” is just so... perfect, so Edward Gorey... second, how does one get “Dauphin” for a khaki olive brown? After some investigation, I see perhaps F&B are too genteel to explain that the color ‘caca-dauphin’ became fashionable when the much-longed-for French crown prince was born to Marie Antoinette, in the 1780s. Ah, Dauphin's Poo. With colors like "Ointment Pink", "Dead Salmon", "Archive", and "Mouse’s Back" how can you not want to know everything about this company?

Creating color names would be my dream job. I remember thinking this in-- what, the early 90s?-- when JCrew was changing popular culture with sweater choices like "Pool" and "Cement." Precious, yes, but in a certain way, how brilliant was that moment? [Didn't Saturday Night Live do a skit? Not sure. But its so easy for color-naming like that to go very, ham-handedly wrong]. Women’s cosmetics did interesting things with color naming but mostly of the punny, "Tickle Me Pink" and expected "Red Wine" variety. Before J Crew: "blue"and "grey", after: the welkin's the limit!
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some interesting color words: gamboge, filemot, glaucous, dun