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The resulting SelectModel has a selectable option (specifically, an OptionModel) for every object in the original List. The label property name (the "name" property, in this example) determines the user-visible text of each menu option, and your ValueEncoder's toClient() method provides the encoded value (most commonly a simple number). If you don't provide a ValueEncoder, the result of the objects' toString() method (Color.toStringColor#toString() in this example) is used. Although not a recommended practice, you could set your toString() to return the object's ID for this purpose:
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In addition to a SelectModel, your Select menu is likely to need a ValueEncoder. While a SelectModel is concerned only with how to construct a Select menu, a ValueEncoder is used when constructing the Select menu and when interpreting the encoded value that is submitted back to the server. A ValueEncoder is a converter between the type of objects you want to represent as options in the menu and the client-side encoded values that uniquely identify them, and vice-versa.
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*JumpStart Demo:*
[Easy Object Select|http://jumpstart.doublenegative.com.au/jumpstart/examples/select/easyobject]
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Most commonly, your ValueEncoder's toClient() method will return a unique ID (e.g. a database primary key, or perhaps a UUID) of the given object, and its toValue() method will return the object matching the given ID by doing a database lookup (ideally using a service or DAO method).
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Actually, it's really pretty easy if you follow the examples above. But why is Tapestry designed to use SelectModels and ValueEncoders anyway? Well, in short, this design allows you to avoid storing (via @Persist, @SessionAttribute or @SessionState) the entire (potentially large) list of objects in the session or rebuilding the whole list of objects again (though only one is needed) when the form is submitted. The chief benefits are reduced memory use and more scalable clustering due to having far less HTTP session data to replicate across the nodes of a cluster.