Color of paper and board

Frank A. Reynolds <fr0c [at] andrew__cmu__edu> writes

>Are there color standards for art boards and papers, or does each
>manufacture establish their own?  What I am looking for is whether
>white, off-white, etc. are relative terms or are derived from some
>set standard.

Last month, it was asked whether there are color standards for
(presumably archival quality) board and paper. I wanted to give
vendors a chance to respond here before replying with my own
experiences. In a nutshell, it seems that color standards,
especially with museum mat/mounting board of archival quality, are
rather broadly defined. End users of these products should not rely
on colors of board as printed in vendor catalogues, except in the
general sense. Same goes for swatchbooks--one can only rely on
samples to get an approximate idea. The best way to ensure
consistency of color is to work closely with one's vendor to verify
that all the board on a particular order, or over several orders,
was from the same manufactured batch. Otherwise, if one is not
careful, one can get slight variations of, say,  "soft white", which
can be quite noticeable, for example, in an exhibit of black and
white photographs.

George Leake
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
Conservation Department
UT Austin

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:53
                Distributed: Thursday, December 17, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-12-53-004
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