Pearsalls Color Chart

[Greenwell]

I am curious, isn't there an actual Pearsall's color reference chart? I thought I saw one once in a book, but I am not sure.

Or maybe I was thinking of this one... pearsalls_color_chart.pdf

John

John,

Yes, the Silk Color Chart appears in Edmond and Lee's Brook and River Trouting. but curiously they omit colors # 19 & 20. The Pearsalls Chart is reproduced in Rob Smith's book as well and probably in a couple others that I can't call to mind at the moment.

[joaniebo]

I am curious, isn't there an actual Pearsall's color reference chart? I thought I saw one once in a book, but I am not sure.

Or maybe I was thinking of this one... pearsalls_color_chart.pdf

John

John,

Yes, the Silk Color Chart appears in Edmond and Lee's Brook and River Trouting. but curiously they omit colors # 19 & 20. The Pearsalls Chart is reproduced in Rob Smith's book as well and probably in a couple others that I can't call to mind at the moment.

I might be mistaken but I believe the Pearsall #19 (Hot Orange) and #20 (Light Olive) are relatively newer Pearsall colors are may not have been around when the above mentioned color chart was made.

For years, I used to buy my Pearsall silks and flosses directly from Alec Jackson, who was the North American importer of the Pearall silks, and I do remember Alec telling me that he had Pearsall so a few new colors several years back.....not the Hot Orange but possibly the Light Olive or the Golden / Yellow silk.

[Greenwell]

"I might be mistaken but I believe the Pearsall #19 (Hot Orange) and #20 (Light Olive) are relatively newer Pearsall colors are may not have been around when the above mentioned color chart was made."

Color # 19, Hot Orange has been around for a very long time. Skues makes several references to it for flies like his March Brown, Pheasant Tail, and Red Spinner. I have spools of #19 that go back to the early part of the 20th century and while the designation has stayed the same the colors have changed quite a bit over the years. This is probably true of most of the colors as the dyes changed, but the difference in the Hot Orange is particularly striking.
My best guess is that Edmonds & Lee simply left out a couple colors that they didn't mention in their fly patterns.

As an interesting aside, Leonard West suggests that all of the fly patterns in his book The Natural Trout Fly and it's Imitation1912, can be tied with orange silk as he felt that was the strongest color. And this from someone who went to great lengths to get every other color of his imitations just right, including the eyes of the insects! Go figure..........

[PhilA]

A shade of yellow is probably the most commonly specified color of silk in old fly patterns. The photo below shows side-by-side comparisons of the various Pearsall's Gossamer yellows. I manually set the white balance of my camera and, on my monitor, the colors are very close to the real thing. On any monitor (even poorly adjusted ones), the RELATIVE color differences should be apparent.



John, do you know the approximate year when Pearsall's switched from spooling their Gossamer threads from wooden to plastic spools?

[tie2fish]

That is a revealing comparison, PhilA. If I had been guessing without your ID text, I would have switched the labels on No's 4 and 5. Probably my monitor ...

[PhilA]

If I had been guessing without your ID text, I would have switched the labels on No's 4 and 5.

Bill,
That's what I thought, but no! Spools of No. 4 (Light Yellow) are almost impossible to find. I once wrote to Pearsall's Ltd. (actually, Langley's) to inquire if they had any spools of No. 4 available. They did not, but they had two remaining spools of Gossamer (actually, SuperFine) they called color "No. 4-H". The "H" stands for "Harding". Mike Harding had submitted an old spool of true No. 4 to Langley's to be replicated, which their thread dying expert did. Subsequent to that correspondence, I found several spools of old No. 4 on wooden spools and took the above photo.

I didn't take a photo of No. 4-H integrated with the above yellows, but the photo below shows No. 4-H relative to the above No. 4. Color No. 4-H is lighter than No. 4, and a little darker than a modern No. 5.



Given the decades over which all these colors were made, such tiny variations are surely insignificant. There's not a trout in the world who would snub their nose at any of these threads due to an inexact shade of yellow! We get snubbed for other reasons.

[joaniebo]

As an added note, in one of my conversations with Alec Jackson, I asked him about the possibility of getting some of the old colors reproduced. He told me that some of the colors could not be reproduced using the old dye formulas because many of the chemicals / materials used in the old dyes were no longer legal / safe to use.

In addition, even modern day dyes used with the Pearsall silks, before they were discontinued, had variations in each dye lots. (I've seen that also in different dye lots of yarns). Age / exposure has caused some colors to change slightly over time. I have some spools that I purchased years ago that (to my eyes) look slightly different than the same color number purchased just a couple years ago.

I've had so much trouble seeing the difference in some of the yellows, that when I ordered them from Alec, I asked him to mark which was "primrose", "straw", etc.

[Greenwell]

John, do you know the approximate year when Pearsall's switched from spooling their Gossamer threads from wooden to plastic spools?
[/quote]


To the best of my recollection it was in the 1980's but it may have a bit later. I've used Pearsalls since I learned to tie as a kid and all the spools were wooden through the mid 1980's at least. The packaging changed too, first small cardboard boxes of several different types, then plastic covered boxes. Plastic tubes were used for a while also in the 1990's. I'll try to take some photos of different packages and spools but my camera skills are rudimentary at best.

It's important to remember that Pearsalls was not the only silk used, especially on North Country Spiders. Yorkshire was the center of silk thread production with many factories manufacturing silk suitable for fly tying so there would have been innumerable shades and variations available over the course of a couple centuries. Best not to get too wrapped around the axle when it comes to silk colors!

In the Catskills, Beldings was one of the brands that was used. It came on 200 yd spools and we just used white and black. They made a 6/0 that was beautiful to tie with and an 8/0 that broke if you looked at it wrong. I think I still have some spools of it somewhere.

One last observation. Because of the dyes used different colors had different breaking strengths. Black is always the weakest and I've been frustrated by it many times, even with fresh spools of black. The light colors usually have higher breaking strengths and as I stated elsewhere Orange is especially strong.

[Theroe]

Ah, Belding Corticelli....great stuff. As are Champion, Gudebrod, etc. And Reed Tackle - I don’t know who he bought his cell chrome, but I liked it the whole lot better than herders. I still have a couple of dozen spools in sizes 2/0, 3/0, 4/0, 5/0, 6/0 and 8/0. And yes, the white 8/0 is very fragile, unless you happen upon a “good” spool.
Most all of those wood spools hold 500 yards too!

IMHO, silk thread is head and shoulders above all others.....there is just something special about how it handles and wraps.....and the sheen is second to none.

Dana

[daringduffer]

A shade of yellow is probably the most commonly specified color of silk in old fly patterns.

I have read in different texts that if the colour of silk is omitted you can be almost certain that it should be yellow of some kind. (That can be used as a hint for Stewart's Dun Spider).

I agree about how many different yellow shades Pearsall have produced. I had a spool of rich yellow with a marvellous 'sheen', aquired about forty years ago, that is empty by now. I should have left a few turns on that spool but it was such a pleasure to use it.

Regarding the photo of number 4 and number 5 in one post, I have to agree with Master Shuck. The paler yellow is number 4, Light Yellow, and the richer yellow is number 5, Yellow. When I compare what I see on my screen, (weak argument, I know) with my reference collection with numbers written on the spools and with my Pearsalls reference chart with authentic silk, that is my pompous verdict.

(My reference collection comes from EMTE in Vessigebro who was the Veniard wholesaler in Scandinavia and Margrethe Thomsen (EM TE) was the professional fly tying lady in Sweden, with close connection to Preben Torp Jacobsen).

I also wonder if there can be a difference in silk quality, and how it takes the dye and reflects the light, as part of explanation to how we see the shades. As I have mentioned before, I have or have had, a couple of spools with a much richer 'sheen' to them. These are/were number 5 yellow and number 19 hot orange but also number 12 Cardinal and number 13 Crimson. Those rich spools I collected from old stash in the early eightees. I wish I had more of them left.

dd

Edit, added 'and reflects the light'.