The description and classification of craquelure

The paper provides the statistical context of research to define simple dichotomous terms for the description of craquelure. The validity of the proposed set of eight descriptors of craquelure is established by reference to the results of various classification tasks. These include the unassisted assignment of craquelure to specific categories by experienced subjects, the same task undertaken by inexperienced subjects assisted by rules, the classification of representations of craquelure by a neural network, and by discriminant analysis. Two types of representation are compared: one based upon the Repertory Grid technique and the other based upon Bezier curves.