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I think my favourite is 'Elephant's Breath', which is both terribly fancy and describes something colourless. Companies fight over corporate shades all the time, especially eye-grabbing ones like orange, lime, or purple, but legal scraps over individual paint shades are a lot rarer, presumably because there are only so many distinguishable ones, and only so many words to describe them, that companies are bound to use the same words a lot of the time. But you will like Farrow and Ball -- a heritage paint co. from the UK, whose current range includes not only Elephant's Breath, but Dead Salmon, Clunch, Mole's Breath (much darker than an elephant's, apparently), Mouse's Back and Churlish Green. They make a real thing about their odd and antiquated names. Their paint is very expensive and generally hated by decorators both professional and amateur, who reckon it has not only the colours of Jane Austen's era, but also the covering power -- it really is only worth it if your property is Grade 1 listed, or you are the National Trust, and thus aren't allowed to use modern paint formulas, but for this very reason it also has snob value. Noting that people often came to paint-matching services with Farrow and Ball shades (this is legal as long as you're not blatantly scanning in the FB matching cards), ICI brought out a range rather unimaginatively called 'FB', with shades designated only by numbers but obviously 'inspired by' Farrow and Ball bestsellers. Farrow and Ball were understandably livid. As far as I know the 'FB' line was dropped, probably because ICI reckoned it would get too much bad publicity to be suspected of ripping off a small and well-loved rival, and also because they knew drat well that people would still use their paint-matching service to achieve the same thing. I suspect they would have got away with it, though, if they'd just given the copycat paints weird pseudohistorical names of their own. So maybe the names do have a point after all.
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Mar 12, 2015 14:57
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 14:55 |
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