How this register is made: the archival standards it borrows from, how they are applied, and what the site is built with.
The Library of Patina is a register of weathered surfaces, and it is organised the way a real archive would organise them. Where a published standard exists for a cataloguing decision — numbering, taxonomy, environment, colour — the register follows it and cites it below. Where none exists, it follows the conventions of conservation documentation.
Spectrum, the collections-management standard required of accredited UK museums, requires every accessioned object to carry one unique number, and requires that the number itself carry no catalogue information — no classification codes, no locations — because classifications change and numbers must not.[1][2] Accessions here therefore identify; the series shelving (cupreous, ferrous, stone…) is a facet of the record, not of the number. The schema reserves a field for IGSN, the DOI-based persistent identifier used for physical samples in the geosciences.[3]
The vocabulary of deterioration is controlled. The ICOMOS-ISCS Illustrated Glossary on Stone Deterioration Patterns defines the field's terms and files patina formally under its discolouration & deposit family, alongside crust, soiling and efflorescence.[4] For painted and architectural surfaces the register follows EwaGlos, the European illustrated glossary of conservation terms.[5] Pattern fields in specimen records draw from these glossaries.
A patina is the output of its environment, so records classify the atmosphere that made them using ISO 9223, which grades corrosivity from C1 (very low) to C5 (very high) and CX (extreme, marine-industrial).[6] Surface colour is recorded in Munsell hue value/chroma notation, the specimen-colour practice standardised as ASTM D1535 and used across soils, minerals and natural-science collections.[7]
Every plate declares its source type in its record. The current exhibition uses open-access photographs from Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under their stated licences with author credit linked from each record; register entries without a suitable plate are withheld until a field capture from the collection replaces them. The rule for all plates is that the texture is the specimen: an image should not disclose the object it was taken from.
Two typefaces with strict roles, both open-licence (SIL OFL) and self-hosted so the register renders identically everywhere. Archivo is the reading voice, with its expanded width reserved for the identity and series titles. Martian Mono is the instrument voice, and only ever speaks in numbers, field labels and badges.[8]
A static site built with Vite and TypeScript. The library itself is two WebGL scenes rendered with Three.js: the card matrix (raycast hover, eased pose targets) and the application room (orbit controls, tiled textures, decal stamps). The interface bundle is roughly 140 kB gzipped before specimen imagery.