Topical Guide 49

Mark Dorset

Aesthetics, Aesthetic Choices; Clamboats, Morphology and Aesthetics of

The boats employed in the harvesting of clams from Bolotomy Bay are painted in shades of gray, and are as little distinguished from one another as are the men who captain them or the clams that they hunt. . . . What a delightful contrast the gaily colored pleasure boats make, each as it were a frolicsome Pierrot, flitting about among the clumsy, mirthless, working boats.

Boating on the Bolotomy

This could be a photograph of a clamboat in Babbington taken on January 24, 2010. It is not a photograph of a clamboat in Babbington taken on January 24, 2010, but it could be. This is not a monochrome photograph. Note the colors of the licenses in the cabin window and the large brick house in the more prosperous village of West Hargrove across the river.

This is a photograph of an oyster boat in the Bassin d’Arcachon, France, taken on December 8, 1999.

     I poured a little of each color of paint onto the lid of one of the cans and stirred the colors together with a stick. The result looked much like the muck beneath the Lodkochnikovs’ house.
     “What’s wrong with that?” asked Raskol. He looked at me with genuine surprise. “That’s my favorite color,” he said. “Taupe. . . .”

Little Follies, “Life on the Bolotomy”

Taupe ( /ˈtoʊp/TOHP) is a dark gray-brown color. The word derives from the French noun taupe meaning “mole.” The name originally referred only to the average color of the French mole, but beginning in the 1940s, its usage expanded to encompass a wider range of shades.
     Taupe is a vague color term which may refer to almost any grayish brown or brownish gray, but true taupe is difficult to pinpoint as brown or gray.

Wikipedia

Philipp Otto Runge, Farbenkugel (Color Sphere), 1810 (Wikimedia). In the “Durchschnitt durch den Aequator” section (lower left), varieties of taupe are found in the inner circles.

The morphology and aesthetics of clamboats is the subject of Chapter 19 in Inflating a Dog.

[more to come on Wednesday, July 21, 2021]

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