I hooked up our cheesy color laser printer to our network under two names:
one for color printing and another that used only black toner (because I
didn't want B/W prints to increment the color cartridges' copy counters).

Because the "printer class" concept is too deep for my feeble brane, I
simply brought up the CUPS clicky-clicky webbeydoodle (http://localhost:631
on your browser dial, I think) and set up two printers.  Somehow the
webbeydoodle let me select the same physical printer under two different
names.  I could select the print characteristics for each (e.g., color vs.
monchrome).

It seems to work fine.