38+ shades of grey

Iceland greys

19th century Dufour et Cie Psyche grisaille wallpaper panel. the paper trail

Farrow and Ball paint chips

undyed wool

Claremont Grisaille, fabric by Schumacher

Confederate greys

my mother and her pet chicken, 1930s

above and below, Vija Celmins, Ocean, 1975 and Explosion at Sea, 1966

ash, carbon, cinder, lead, smoke, fog, battleship, greige, Davy’s, charcoal, heather, flint, cement, slate, silver, platinum, titanium, warm, cool, dark, light, medium, pigeon, elephant, graphite, pearl, dove, glaucous, Cadet, cinereous, mouse, gunpowder, stone, fuscous, liard, lavender, blue, steel, mercury, chinchilla, seal

I've been thinking about grey. A design job I was working on turned unexpectedly difficult this past week when the printing of some 4-color greys proved to be a stubborn wrangle. [In printing, as you may know, all colors are reproduced as flat (or Pantone) inks or represented by overlapping tint screens of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink ("4-color" or "CMYK")]. Grey, I have confirmed firsthand, can be difficult to capture in 4-color printing. The tone can shift to purple, green, or a brown muddiness; ironically there is a lot of color buried in grey. Despite an array of odd, unlovely and opposing connotations, I've always loved grey. It has an elegant subtlety, range, and depth: Grey matter, grey flannel, Grey Lady, eminence grise, strength, intelligence, sophistication, business, storminess, boredom, depression, old age, grey area, doubt, indistinct, equivocal, dustiness, dirt, disuse, poverty, humility, religious asceticism, modesty, conformity, totalitarianism, secrecy, shadows, fog...  Grey is protean; it's never black or white.