Going for the Blue

Prof. Warren P. Lombard, a physiologist and masterful artist, was meticulous, dedicated, thorough in every way. His files on the 1912 project to select U-M's official colors include his correspondence with tile-makers around the world. In his quest to fulfill the committee's charge to "embody the colors in a lasting form," he even sailed with his wife to Norway to study the manufacture of fabled Norwegian-blue tiles.

No one Lombard consulted abroad or locally could guarantee a color that would last on any material, however. So the committee compiled verbal definitions of the colors. My favorite is a reference University Librarian Theodore Koch cited as a guide for the right "azure blue" from a 1908 poem "The Mother" by Eden Philpotts: "...he woke to find lamp smelling and the light of it reduced to an azure bead of fire."

Attempts were made in 1995 to embody the official colors in lasting form by creating a permanent ink formula. Ink composition and paper surfaces vary so much, the effort failed. However, the blue cover for the President's Office Michigan Mandate serendipitously matched the 1912 blue ribbon. The cover of another document, The Strategic Plan, mirrored the official maize. These samples were cut out and framed, and are now on display in the Office of the President.---LK.