Here's a riddle: Heart's Content, Little Heart's Ease, Dory Buff, Red Cliffe, Memories of Brazil Street, Hard Tack.

What do all these have in common?

Besides their Newfoundland association, they're among the new paint colours developed by Templeton's and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The collaboration has taken about two years, said John Templeton, a partner with his cousin Dave Templeton in the downtown St. John's paint, wallpaper, home decor and hardware store.

The idea for Newfoundland-specific paint colours came from customers requesting heritage hues.

Previously, the store only had sample cards from places like mainland Canada or New England.

"It was not really representative of Newfoundland colours," John explained. "We just wanted to go back and bring out the Newfoundland colours."

"A lot of mainlanders were coming down and buying houses in rural Newfoundland," added Dave.

"They'd come in and say, 'I've got a heritage house - set me up.'"

George Chalker, executive director of the Heritage Foundation, said his organization has often been asked to help property owners select Newfoundland heritage colours. Problem is, there was no palette unique to the province.

"Secondly, people kept wishing to use heritage colours from elsewhere, primarily the United States, not local to the Newfoundland scene," Chalker said.

John dug out old paint cards from Matchless Paint, from the time when it used to operate at the Standard Manufacturing plant on Water Street.

Chalker said some of the original colours still exist on buildings, but with the advent of vinyl siding and other outside influences, those colours were starting to disappear.

Standard Manufacturing and Templeton's have had a long affiliation, Dave explained, with the paint store acting as a distributor.

Those old colours inspired the homegrown historic colours developed by Templeton's and the Heritage Foundation, John said, adding that the new paint chips sat on the paint store's counter for awhile to draw customers' comments.

"We had a lot of fun with it," Dave said.

The main colours are all based on traditional paint tints from Newfoundland, with some inspired by old Reid Newfoundland rail station colours that can still be seen in Avondale and Carbonear.

The main palette colours are accompanied by contemporary, co-ordinating colours, also named to reflect provincial heritage.

Chalker said Lara Maynard of the Heritage Foundation helped come up with the names.

Before the 1950s and '60s - when tintable paint became common and more colours burst onto the scene - homeowners didn't have a lot of choice, according to the paint history on the palette. Back then, houses were often painted one colour, with limited attention paid to trimwork.

And going back even further in time, in the early part of the 20th century before commercially made paints were available, paint was homemade and there were colours like Red Ochre and Dory Buff - colours replicated in the new line.

Ochre was composed of powdered hematite, or iron ore, and ranges in tone from orange to yellow. Early settlers mixed it with fish oil, seal oil or sometimes linseed oil.

The new colour palette also has a Jelly Bean series - eye-popping yellow, orange, orchid, aqua, vernon and red.

Other available colours include Duckish, Foggy Dew, Beachy Cove, Mussels in the Corner, Snow Dwigh, Doughboy, Harbour Deep, Bristol's Hope and Nanny-Goat.

Black is black and white is white. Iceberg Alley is an off-white. Blasty Bough is a rich brown. Sheilagh's Brush is ivory and Mollyfodge is mocha. Bark is well, bark coloured.

Scrunchions is the colour of fried pork fat - a surprisingly pleasant tone.

Rising Sun is a brilliant orange. Christmas Syrup is the colour of Santa's coat, minus the white.

Logy Beige is, indeed, beige.

Ferryland Downs looks like a lush meadow.

The palette is available at any store that sells Matchless products.

Excerpt from The Telegram Wednesday, June 13 by Barb Sweet bsweet@thetelegram.com