Cheysson Palette Naming Crosswalk

A one-row-per-plate lookup table tying together every naming scheme used for these 25 palettes: the package's own cheysson_palettes/ cheysson_patterns names, RJ Andrews' original Advent calendar labels, and Tom Shanley's Observable notebook IDs. Useful whenever you have a palette identified in someone else's terms - an Advent day, a David Rumsey catalog number, or a label copied from Andrews' or Shanley's own work - and need the package name to actually use it in scale_color_cheysson() and friends, or vice versa (see cheysson_name() for a lookup function that does this translation for you).

Usage

cheysson_labels

Format

A data frame with 25 rows and 10 variables:

name: The package's current palette name (e.g. "1881_22") - pass this to scale_color_cheysson(), cheysson_pal(), cheysson_pattern(), etc. Unique; matches names(cheysson_palettes) and names(cheysson_patterns) exactly
advent_day: Advent calendar day (1-25) from RJ Andrews' original digitization project, where he released one palette per day during December
album_year: Year of the album (1880-1906)
plate: The plate number within the album, derived from rumsey_no's decimal suffix (e.g. "12511.007" -> 7) - the real unique per-plate identifier that name is built from
type: Palette type: "Sequential", "Diverging", "Grouped", or "Category"
qty: Number of colors/pattern elements in the palette - despite the name, not a plate identifier (see plate)
rumsey_no: David Rumsey Map Collection list number
old_name: The name this palette would have received under the package's original (Album + qty) naming scheme, before a 2026-09-16 fix - kept for historical reference. Not unique: 4 pairs of genuinely different plates shared an old_name, silently overwriting one another during data extraction until the fix
andrews_label: RJ Andrews' own label for this palette, in the form "Dec.DD-YYYY.PP" (Advent day - album year . plate)
shanley_id: Tom Shanley's Observable notebook ID for this palette: type followed directly by rumsey_no's digits with the dot removed (e.g. "diverging12514021")

Source

David Rumsey Map Collection: https://www.davidrumsey.com/
RJ Andrews Album Colors: https://github.com/infowetrust/albumcolors - see also man/figures/RJ-Andrews-color-palettes.jpg in the package sources for his own reference grid of all 25 labeled palettes
Tom Shanley Observable: https://web.archive.org/web/20210130125506/https://observablehq.com/@tomshanley/cheysson-color-palettes - see also man/figures/shanley-palettes.png in the package sources for his own reference grid of all 25 labeled palettes
data-raw/observable/albumColors.csv (this package) - the original Advent day / Rumsey number / album / type mapping everything else here is derived from

Details

This table exists because the package's own name (Album + plate) is a convenient but package-internal convention - it isn't what you'll see if you're reading Andrews' or Shanley's original write-ups, or working from a Rumsey catalog reference. andrews_label and shanley_id are derived programmatically from the verified rule linking all three schemes (album year + plate, taken from rumsey_no's decimal suffix), not scraped from either source - both were cross-checked against every legible label/ID in the reference images below and matched for all 24/24 checked. (Two of Shanley's own ID strings have isolated typos - a digit transposition and a missing trailing digit; his prose descriptions don't have these typos, and this table's shanley_id gives the corrected form, not the typo'd one.)

old_name also documents a real bug this table helped uncover: before 2026-09-16, palette names were built from qty (a color count) instead of plate (the real per-plate identifier), causing 4 collisions between genuinely different plates and silently dropping 5 of the original 25 palettes from the package. Comparing name to old_name shows exactly what changed for each plate.

Examples

# View the crosswalk
head(cheysson_labels)
#>      name advent_day album_year plate       type qty rumsey_no old_name
#> 1 1883_21          1       1883    21  Diverging   7 12514.021  1883_07
#> 2 1886_24          2       1886    24    Grouped   8 12516.024  1886_08
#> 3 1881_12          3       1881    12 Sequential   3 12512.012  1881_03
#> 4 1886_17          4       1886    17    Grouped   4 12516.017  1886_04
#> 5 1886_28          5       1886    28   Category   7 12516.028  1886_07
#> 6 1880_07          6       1880     7    Grouped   7 12511.007  1880_07
#>    andrews_label         shanley_id
#> 1 Dec.01-1883.21  diverging12514021
#> 2 Dec.02-1886.24    grouped12516024
#> 3 Dec.03-1881.12 sequential12512012
#> 4 Dec.04-1886.17    grouped12516017
#> 5 Dec.05-1886.28   category12516028
#> 6 Dec.06-1880.07    grouped12511007

# Find the package name for a palette described in Andrews' terms
cheysson_labels[cheysson_labels$andrews_label == "Dec.01-1883.21", "name"]
#> [1] "1883_21"

# Find the package name for a palette described in Shanley's terms
cheysson_labels[cheysson_labels$shanley_id == "grouped12511007", "name"]
#> [1] "1880_07"

# See what a palette used to be called before the 2026-09-16 naming fix
subset(cheysson_labels, name != old_name)[, c("name", "old_name")]
#>       name old_name
#> 1  1883_21  1883_07
#> 2  1886_24  1886_08
#> 3  1881_12  1881_03
#> 4  1886_17  1886_04
#> 5  1886_28  1886_07
#> 7  1886_11  1886_08
#> 8  1887_22  1887_06
#> 9  1888_27  1888_05
#> 10 1895_16  1895_04
#> 11 1891_14  1891_03
#> 12 1891_25  1891_07
#> 14 1882_18  1882_04
#> 15 1886_18  1886_04
#> 16 1883_31  1883_04
#> 17 1906_50  1906_04
#> 18 1900_28  1900_06
#> 19 1886_26  1886_04
#> 20 1891_19  1891_06
#> 21 1881_14  1881_04
#> 22 1883_13  1883_06
#> 23 1881_30  1881_08
#> 24 1880_21  1880_07
#> 25 1881_22  1881_04

Usage

Format

Source

Details

See also

Examples