The Secret Lives of Color

by Kassia St. Clair

  3. Ibid., p. 377.

  4. Of a childhood enemy, she says: “She has just reminded me that we were at school together. I remember it perfectly now. She always got the good conduct prize.” Later, saying to the lady herself: “You dislike me, I am quite aware of that, and I have always detested you.” And on the vexing issue of higher education for women: “The higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so sadly.”

  Violet

  1. Quoted in O. Reutersvärd, “The ‘Violettomania’ of the Impressionists,” in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Dec. 1950), p. 107.

  2. Quoted ibid., pp. 107–8.

  3. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 207.

  Blue

  1. R. Blau, “The Light Therapeutic,” in Intelligent Life (May/June 2014).

  2. 2015 National Sleep Foundation poll, see: https://sleepfoundation.org/media-center/press-release/2015-sleep-america-poll; Blau, “Light Therapeutic.”

  3. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 27.

  4. White clocks in at 32%; red, 28%; black, 14%; gold, 10%; purple, 6%; green, 5%. M. Pastoureau, Green: The History of a Color, trans. J. Gladding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 39.

  5. M. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 50.

  6. Heraldry has its own set of color names, or “tinctures.” The basics are or (gold/yellow); argent (silver/white); gules (red); azure (blue); purpure (purple); sable (black); and vert (green).

  7. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 60.

  8. Although it is slightly more popular with men, women chose blue more than any other color; pink [here], incidentally, was no more popular with women than red, purple or green. 2015 YouGov Survey; https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/05/12/blue-worlds-favourite-color.

  Ultramarine

  1. K. Clarke, “Reporters See Wrecked Buddhas,” BBC News (Mar. 26, 2001). Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1242856.stm (accessed on Jan. 10, 2016).

  2. Cennini, Craftsman’s Handbook, Vol. 2, p. 36.

  3. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 267.

  4. Cennini, Craftsman’s Handbook, p. 38.

  5. M. C. Gaetani et al., “The Use of Egyptian Blue and Lapis Lazuli in the Middle Ages: The Wall Paintings of the San Saba Church in Rome,” in Studies in Conservation, Vol. 49, No. 1 (2004), p. 14.

  6. Gage, Color and Culture, p. 271.

  7. Ibid., p. 131.

  8. This was particularly the case in southern Europe. In northern Europe, particularly the Netherlands, where ultramarine was scarcer, and where scarlet dye remained the preeminent mark of wealth and distinction, Mary was often clothed in red.

  9. Gage, Color and Culture, pp. 129–30.

  10. A similar competition, only with a much smaller prize on offer, had been made by the Royal College of Arts in 1817, with no successful applicants.

  11. Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 276–7.

  12. Ibid.

  Cobalt

  1. E. Morris, “Bamboozling Ourselves (Part 1),” in New York Times (May–June 2009). Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/category/bamboozling-ourselves/ (accessed Jan. 1, 2016).

  2. T. Rousseau, “The Stylistic Detection of Forgeries,” in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 277, 252.

  3. Finlay, Brilliant History of Color in Art, p. 57.

  4. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 178.

  5. Harley, Artists’ Pigments, pp. 53–4.

  6. Field, Chromatography, pp. 110–1.

  7. E. Morris, “Bamboozling Ourselves (Part 3).”

  Indigo

  1. Educated guesses as to why plants produce indigo differ. Some suggest it could be a natural insecticide; others have wondered if its bitter taste helps to protect it against the ravages of marauding herbivores.

  2. The pods apparently did not find favor with the early modern herbalist John Parkinson, who described them in 1640 as “hanging downwards, like unto the wormes . . . which we call arseworms, yet somewhat thick and full of black seed.” Quoted in J. Balfour-Paul, Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans (London: British Museum Press, 2000), p. 92.

  3. Some cultures traditionally blamed women for indigo crop failures. In ancient Egypt it was believed anyone menstruating near the field might damage it. In one Chinese province, women with flowers in their hair had to stay away from the fermenting-indigo jars. And on Flores Island, Indonesia, if a woman swears while harvesting the plant, it will offend its soul and ruin the dye completely.

  4. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, pp. 99, 64.

  5. Because these blocks are so hard, many classical authors, and even some early modern ones, thought it was mineral in origin, possibly a semiprecious stone related to lapis lazuli. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 95.

  6. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 5.

  7. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 125.

  8. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, pp. 7, 13.

  9. Eckstut and Eckstut, Secret Language of Color, p. 187.

  10. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 23.

  11. Ibid., pp. 28, 46.

  12. Ibid., pp. 44–5, 63.

  13. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 92.

  14. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 5.

  15. Jean is believed to descend from bleu de Gênes, or Genoa blue, a cheap indigo dye popular for sailors’ uniforms.

  16. Just Style, “Just-Style Global Market Review of Denim and Jeanswear—Forecasts to 2018” (Nov. 2012). Available at www.just-style.com/store/samples/Global%20Market%20for%20Denim%20and%20Jeanswear%2Single_brochure.pdf (accessed Jan. 3, 2016), p. 1.

  Prussian blue

  1. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 273; Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 76.

  2. Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 272–3.

  3. Field, Chromatography, p. 112.

  4. Woodwood received a tip-off from a German man called Caspar Neumann, a debtor to the Royal Society who apparently wanted to reingratiate himself. Neumann sent the method, in Latin, to Woodwood in a letter from Leipzig dated 17 November 1723. The revelation ruined Dippel, who fled to Scandinavia where he became the physician to the Swedish King Frederick I before being expelled from the country and spending some time in a Danish gaol. A. Kraft, “On Two Letters from Caspar Neumann to John Woodward Revealing the Secret Method for Preparation of Prussian Blue,” in Bulletin of the History of Chemistry, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2009), p. 135.

  5. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 275.

  6. Finlay, Color, pp. 346–7.

  7. Eckstut and Eckstut, Secret Language of Color, p. 187.

  8. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 274.

  Egyptian blue

  1. Lucas and Harris, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, p. 170.

  2. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 20; Lucas and Harris, Ancient Egyptian materials and Industries, p. 188; V. Daniels et al., “The Blackening of Paint Containing Egyptian Blue,” in Studies in Conservation, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2004), p. 219.

  3. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 20.

  4. Daniels et al., “Blackening of Paint Containing Egyptian Blue,” p. 217.

  5. M. C. Gaetani et al., “Use of Egyptian Blue and Lapis Lazuli in the Middle Ages,” p. 13.

  6. Ibid., p. 19.

  7. Although it now looks as if ultramarine and Egyptian blue were used concurrently longer than was thought: the two pigments have been found mixed together in the murals at one eighth-century church in Rome.

  Woad

  1. J. Edmonds, The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat (Lulu.com, 2006), p. 40.

  2. Ibid., p. 13; Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 44.

  3. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 44.

  4. Quoted in Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 30.

  5. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 63.

  6. Ibid., p. 64.

  7. Quoted in Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 34.

  8. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 125.

&nbs
p; 9. Quoted in Edmonds, History of Woad, pp. 38–9.

  10. Pastoureau, Blue, p. 130; Balfour-Paul, Indigo, p. 56–7.

  Electric blue

  1. New Scientist interview with Alexander Yuvchenko, “Cheating Chernobyl” (Aug. 21, 2004).

  2. M. Lallanilla, “Chernobyl: Facts About the Nuclear Disaster,” in LiveScience (Sept. 25, 2013). Available at: www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html (accessed Dec. 30, 2015).

  3. A few hours later, Yuvchenko found himself in the local hospital, paralyzed with radiation sickness, watching as one by one his fellow nuclear plant workers died around him. He is one of the few survivors from the plant.

  4. New Scientist interview with Alexander Yuvchenko, “Cheating Chernobyl.”

  5. Quoted in Salisbury, Elephant’s Breath and London Smoke, p. 75.

  Cerulean

  1. S. Heller, “Oliver Lincoln Lundquist, Designer, Is Dead at 92,” in New York Times (Jan. 3, 2009).

  2. Pantone press release, 1999: www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=20194&ca=10.

  3. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 179. The pigment took its name from the word caeruleus, used by later Roman writers to describe the Mediterranean Sea.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, trans. J. M. Todd (University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 117.

  Green

  1. Finlay, Color, pp. 285–6.

  2. Pastoureau, Green, pp. 20–4.

  3. Eckstut and Eckstut, Secret Language of Color, pp. 146–7.

  4. Pastoureau, Green, p. 65.

  5. Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 73–4.

  6. Ibid., pp. 14–5.

  7. Quoted in Pastoureau, Green, p. 42.

  8. Quoted ibid., p. 116.

  9. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 158.

  10. Pastoureau, Green, p. 159.

  11. Quoted in ibid., p. 200.

  Verdigris

  1. P. Conrad, “Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait by Carola Hicks,” in the Guardian (Oct. 16, 2011). The portrait has had an eventful history too. It was owned by Philip II of Spain, the sixteenth-century Habsburg monarch. His descendant Carlos III hung it in the royal family’s bathroom. It was coveted by Napoleon and, later, Hitler, and spent much of the Second World War with many other National Gallery treasures in a top-secret bunker hidden in the Blaenau Ffestiniog slate quarry in Snowdonia in Wales. (This was just as well: the National Gallery later suffered a direct hit by the Luftwaffe during an air raid.)

  2. C. Hicks, Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait (London: Vintage, 2012), pp. 30–2.

  3. Pastoureau, Green, pp. 112, 117.

  4. The glowing green mineral malachite is also formed of copper carbonate.

  5. Eckstut and Eckstut, Secret Language of Color, p. 152.

  6. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 113.

  7. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 140.

  8. Cennini, Craftsman’s Handbook, p. 33.

  9. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 299.

  10. Quoted in Pastoureau, Green, p. 190.

  11. This mixture is often called copper resinate, really an umbrella term for a wide range of mixtures made with verdigris and resins.

  Absinthe

  1. K. MacLeod, introduction to M. Corelli, Wormwood: A Drama of Paris (New York: Broadview, 2004), p. 44.

  2. P. E. Prestwich, “Temperance in France: The Curious Case of Absinth,” in Historical Reflections, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Winter 1979), p. 302.

  3. Ibid., pp. 301–2.

  4. “Absinthe,” in The Times (May 4, 1868).

  5. “Absinthe and Alcohol,” in Pall Mall Gazette (Mar. 1, 1869).

  6. Prestwich, “Temperance in France,” p. 305.

  7. F. Swigonsky, “Why Was Absinthe Banned for 100 Years?,” Mic.com (June 22, 2013). Available at: http://mic.com/articles/50301/why-was-absinthe-banned-for-100-years-a-mystery-as-murky-as-the-liquor-itself#.NXpx3nWbh (accessed Jan. 8, 2016).

  Emerald

  1. Avarice—green; envy and jealousy—yellow; pride and lust—red; anger—black; sloth—blue or white. Pastoureau, Green, p. 121.

  2. Ibid., pp. 56, 30.

  3. B. Bornell, “The Long, Strange Saga of the 180,000-carat Emerald: The Bahia Emerald’s Twist-Filled History,” in Bloomberg Businessweek (Mar. 6, 2015).

  Kelly green

  1. Kelly, a common Irish surname from which the color takes its name, has a much-disputed etymology. Some believe it originally indicated a warrior; others, a religious person.

  2. For the full text see www.confessio.ie.

  3. A. O’Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism 1865–1914 (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), p. 5.

  4. Pastoureau, Green, pp. 174–5.

  5. O’Day, Reactions to Irish Nationalism, p. 3.

  Scheele’s green

  1. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 173.

  2. Ibid.

  3. P. W. J. Bartrip, “How Green Was My Valence? Environmental Arsenic Poisoning and the Victorian Domestic Ideal,” in The English Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 433 (Sept. 1994), p. 895.

  4. “The Use of Arsenic as a Color,” The Times (Sept. 4, 1863).

  5. Bartrip, “How Green Was My Valence?,” pp. 896, 902.

  6. G. O. Rees, Letter to The Times (June 16, 1877).

  7. Harley, Artists’ Pigments, pp. 75–6.

  8. Quoted in Pastoureau, Green, p. 184.

  9. Bartrip, “How Green Was My Valence?,” p. 900.

  10. W. J. Broad, “Hair Analysis Deflates Napoleon Poisoning Theories,” in New York Times (June 10, 2008).

  Terre verte

  1. Eastaugh et al., Pigment Compendium, p. 180.

  2. Field, Chromatography, p. 129.

  3. Delamare and Guineau, Color, pp. 17–8.

  4. Cennini, Craftsman’s Handbook, p. 67.

  5. Ibid., pp. 93–4.

  6. Ibid., p. 27.

  Avocado

  1. K. Connolly, “How U.S. and Europe Differ on Offshore Drilling,” BBC (May 18, 2010).

  2. Eiseman and Recker, Pantone, pp. 135, 144.

  3. Pastoureau, Green, p. 24.

  4. J. Cartner-Morley, “The Avocado Is Overcado: How #Eatclean Turned It into a Cliché,” in the Guardian (Oct. 5, 2015).

  Celadon

  1. L. A. Gregorio, “Silvandre’s Symposium: The Platonic and the Ambiguous in L’Astrée,” in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Autumn 1999), p. 783.

  2. Salisbury, Elephant’s Breath and London Smoke, p. 46.

  3. S. Lee, “Goryeo Celadon.” Available at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cela/hd_cela.htm (accessed Mar. 20, 2016).

  4. Ibid.

  5. J. Robinson, “Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon,” in Archaeology, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1987) pp. 56–8.

  6. Finlay, Color, p. 286.

  7. Robinson, “Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon,” p. 59; quoted in Finlay, Color, p. 271.

  8. Finlay, Color, p. 273.

  Brown

  1. Genesis 3:19.

  2. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 200.

  3. Eastaugh et al., Pigment Compendium, p. 55.

  4. M. P. Merrifield, The Art of Fresco Painting in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003).

  5. Quoted in “Miracles Square,” OpaPisa website. Available at: www.opapisa.it/en/miracles-square/sinopie-museum/the-recovery-of-the-sinopie.html (accessed Oct. 20, 2015).

  6. Ball, Bright Earth, p. 152.

  7. Martin Boswell, Imperial War Museum; private correspondence.

  Khaki

  1. This was particularly true of their chemical industry, thanks to technical advances in the manufacture of aniline dyes. Britain had become so reliant on German’s dye industry that at times during t
he war Britain found itself almost unable to dye its own uniforms khaki: it was Germany who produced the colorants.

  2. Richard Slocombe, Imperial War Museum; private correspondence.

  3. J. Tynan, British Army Uniform and the First World War: Men in Khaki (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 1–3.

  4. William Hodson, second in command of the Guides, quoted in ibid., p. 2.

  5. Martin Boswell, Imperial War Museum; private correspondence.

  6. J. Tynan, “Why First World War Soldiers Wore Khaki,” in World War I Centenary from the University of Oxford. Available at: http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/material/why-first-world-war-soldiers-wore-khaki/(accessed Oct. 11, 2015). In 1914, officers were easily distinguishable from regular soldiers by special clothing, such as long leather boots and, as Paul Fussell puts it in The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford University Press, 2013), “melodramatically cut riding breeches.” These made them special targets; they soon donned regular khaki uniforms like all the rest.

  7. A. Woollacott, “‘Khaki Fever’ and Its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Homefront in the First World War,” in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr. 1994), pp. 325–6.

  8. Marie Lloyd, known as the queen of the music hall, frequently sang the popular “Now You’ve Got Yer Khaki On” when performing in 1915, the gist of which was that wearing khaki could make a man seem more attractive.

  Buff

  1. Salisbury, Elephant’s Breath and London Smoke, p. 36.

  2. Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, pp. 559, 652.

  3. G. C. Stone, A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999), p. 152.

  4. Quoted in E. G. Lengel (ed.), A Companion to George Washington (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

  5. Up to this point the colonies had relied on Britain for much of their cloth; uniforms were hard to reliably source for the Americans during the war and there was a constant struggle to keep the men clothed. When, on New Year’s Day 1778, HMS Symmetry was captured while loaded with supplies including “Scarlett, Blue & Buff Cloth, sufficient to Cloath all the officers of the Army,” there was general rejoicing (followed by intense squabbling over where the cloth would end up).