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Name these colors.
The last two articles about color theory got me thinking and looking at all my lectures, lesson plans and project hand outs, these and all my color books and art history books are stacked right next to me on this desk and it is taller than I am as I sit here hoping I am not harmed by an intellectual and colorful avalance.
There is so much stuff to share with you all it is quite an undertaking but I will prevail. So, in order that I don't lose anyone with too much color fact, I have a few fun articles I will place in between the color theory ones.
Color names are interesting. The words we make up for each color is interesting too. Early languages seem to have created a word for dark and light or black and white first and then the color red came along. After that the word for green or yellow was created, then blue was added then brown. If a language has eight or more terms for color then purple, pink, orange and grey show up as words describing a specific color reference. The rule is that languages develop color terms in a chronological order.
The Anglo-Saxons had a word for the sheen on a ravens wing, Wann, which also described the light rippling off of chail mail armour. The Maoris have over 100 terms for the color red and the Eskimo have a rich vocabulary of color terms to describe snow and ice. The early tribes of Gaul and later on the English all developed many color words to describe the many colors of horses.
So let's look at some fun facts about color names.
Puce, ya know where that word came from? Puce describes the belly color of a flea.
Mauve comes from the plant name Malva which was used to create that color. At one time many people were trying to develop a cheap and chemical alternative to the Malva plant dye. In 1856, an 18 year old chemistry student named William Henry Perkin discovered a way to make a beautiful dye from coal tars which created a Mad Mauve decade of color history and fashion.
Ultramarine Blue, many folks think this word 'ultramarine' has to do with the color of the sea but that is not the case here. Ultramarine means "from over the sea" which means 'from a long way off'. The finest blue pigment for a very long time was made from Lapis Lazuli, a blue mineral that is only found in a few places around the world and the finest grade lapus comes only from Afghanistan. All this lapus was coming from there to Venice by ships so 'over the seas'. The reason you always see Mary, the mother of Jesus, in a blue robe is because it was the most expensive color pigment at the time and painting her with a blue robe was a way to show a sense of reverance towards her. It also had much to do with symbol and sky and the mother godess references.
Cobalt Blue, thee word cobalt comes from the German word Kobbold which means "gremlin", German miners where digging this stuff up for a long time and considered it a real mining problem because where there is cobalt there is arsenic and this stuff was dangerous to be around in closed spaces. It was much later when it was discovered that cobalt made a nice cheap and permanent blue pigment and dye.
Azure comes from a Persian word for 'blue stone' which described the lapus stone, the word was lazward.
Purple come form the word porphyra, a Greek word for the specific shellfish, a whelk, that makes Tyrian Purple, the color of the robes of the Roman Emperor.
Mummy, yes there was a color called mummy and it was made from parts of them. The Egyptians used asphaltum in their mummy recipes which is just asphalt mixed with turpentine and oils. Someone got the idea to break off pieces of mummy to make a pigment but after it was learned of this, the practice soon stopped.
Bone Black, yep made from charred bones.
Caput Mortuum, this means 'head of the dead' but it was not made from them. It describes a blueish red to purple red color made from a specific iron oxide ore that looked like the color of brusing on the face or the livid purple color of a dead head.
Indian Yellow, this is an old and odd color and was made by heating up the urine of cows that were fed mango leaves. It made an OK dye but as a paint pigment it tended to fade with time.
Indigo, it is just a squashed up word that devleoped from a Greek word meaning 'from India'.
There are specific color combinations that cropped up in history and fashion with much social and cultural appreciation, with each new discovery in color pigments and chemical dyes and inks, the world of color changed.
In the 1960's pink was big in the United States and it never really has died out as a favorite color for many people. Hot Pink Baby!
There are a ton of obsolete names for different, pigments, paints, dyes, inks and lakes, history is full of color names but there is this funny thing about colors and color names and I'll let the Artist and Art Educator Josef Albers make the last point from his book Interaction of Color:
Color recollection-visual memory
If one says "red" (the name of the color)
and there are 50 people in the room
it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds
and one can be sure that all of these reds be very different.
Even when a certain color is specified which all listeners have seen
inummerable times- such as the red of the Coca Cola signs which is
the same red all over the country-they will still think of
many different reds................
First, it is hard if not impossible to remember distinct colors.
Second, the nomenclature of color is most inadequate.
Though there are innumerable colors- shades and tones-
in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 color names.
So if you want to, you could start making up neat words to describe specific colors, hey what the heck, it may catch on, Puce did. :)
