“One does not necessarily think of a color as a commodity. Colors, the ancients reasoned, are qualities of objects, or our eyes’ subjective response to those objects, not entities in themselves. They tinge and dapple and pass on. Nonetheless, some ancients paid high prices for one color: purple. So “Tyrian purple” is the name Perkin gives his new hue, referencing the dye eked out of the glandular secretions of tiny, spiny sea snails in ancient Tyre to color the imperial robes of Rome. But real Tyrian purple was the near-black of dried blood. What’s more, Perkin’s color is cheap, but that’s mauve for you, the color of ostentation.”

From “Colors/Mauve” By Shelley Jackson 

Notes

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