Passionate About Purple

A Brief History of the Color Purple

Nov 23, 2009 Kristin Hanneman

Prized in ancient times, purple lent prestige to those powerful and wealthy enough to wear it.

Modern aficionados of the color purple can choose from a dizzying array of products in their favorite color: jewelry, clothing, shoes, leather goods, luggage, linens, home furnishings, kitchen gadgets, gardening tools, flashlights, laptops and automobiles. In the midst of this plenty it is easy to forget that purple was once so precious it was only available to a privileged few.

Ancient Sources of Purple

Legend holds that Melqart, god of the Phoenician city Tyre, discovered purple dye as he walked along the seashore with his dog. The dog stopped to eat some mollusks. Melqart soon noticed his dog’s muzzle was stained purple. Archaeological evidence dating from 1500 B. C. indicates mollusks from Murex species were used to create dye at Ugarit, an ancient Phoenician city.

An industry formed to extract the dye from species of Murex and Pupura that secrete purple-tinged ink as a defensive mechanism.

Although recent evidence indicates Minoans on Crete were producing purple dye from mollusks as early as 1750 B. C., Phoenicians in Tyre were the first to exploit the Murex-based dye commercially on a large scale, selling purple textiles throughout the Mediterranean region. The word Phoenicia probably comes from the Greek Phoinikes, or “red color.” Since this ancient dye created a purple with red overtones, the name likely refers to the trade in purple textiles.

To create the dye, fluid had to be extracted from a small gland in each mollusk. Differing the length of exposure to sunlight affected the shade of color produced. Processing over 10,000 mollusks resulted in only a small amount of dye. Such labor-intensive work was extremely expensive, making the purple cloth affordable only to royalty or the very rich. Not surprisingly, the color became known as Tyrian purple or Imperial purple.

Purple textiles became a symbol of luxury and prestige throughout the Mediterranean world. References to purple appear in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Bible and the plays of Aeschylus. Cleopatra dyed the sails of her ship purple. Purple was declared the official color of the Roman Empire; its use was restricted to the emperor. Production of the tincture and the process of dyeing were tightly regulated.

Other ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Mayans, Aztecs and Chinese also created purple dyes. The Mayans used a Murex species indigenous to the coastline of Central America; the Egyptians exploited plant-based sources as early as 1900 B. C. Purple was later used to dye court raiments and illuminated manuscripts in the Byzantine Empire.

Murex-based dyes declined in use during the Middle Ages. Other less expensive sources of purple continued to be used in various parts of the world; usually red dyes were combined with blue dyes to produce shades of purple from crimson to violet.

Sources of red dye included madder plants, kermes and cochineal insects, lacs (from the cocoon of the lac insect), the lichen known as orseille or orchil and berries such as blueberries and blackberries. Blue dyes were made from indigo, woad and logwood.

The Serendipitous Discovery of a Synthetic Purple

In 1856, French scientists patented a colorfast formula for lichen-based purple known as “French Purple.” However, this advance was overshadowed by William Henry Perkin’s discovery of the first synthetic dye in the same year. The dye happened to be mauveine or aniline purple.

Only 18 years old at the time, Perkins was investigating coal tar as a possible source of artificial quinine to cure malaria. His experiment failed, but in the process, he produced a residue that dyed fabric a beautiful light pinkish-purple hue.

Perkins realized the commercial opportunity immediately. He developed and perfected the manufacturing process to dye textiles with aniline purple. The distinctive color became immensely popular in Europe and America; the widespread use of mauve in fashions of the 1890s sparked the term “the Mauve Decade.”

Distinguishing Purple From Violet

Although in common usage the terms purple and violet are used interchangeably, there is an important difference. Violet is on the spectrum of visible light; purple is a non-spectral color, meaning there is not a single wavelength of light that corresponds to it. Spectral colors such as red and violet do have individual wavelengths of light that correspond to them.

On the color wheel, purple is between magenta and violet. Artists mix red and blue pigments to create purple. Because it is a non-spectral color, purple is often considered illusory; the eye sees the combination of red and blue light.

Color Symbolism

Purple combines the tranquility of blue and the fiery energy of red, keeping undertones of both. In addition to the association with power and royalty, purple represents mysticism and mourning, sorrow and suffering. It is otherworldly and ethereal.

According to Thomas Bechtold and Rita Mussak’s book Handbook of Natural Colorants, “purple was used for powerful emotional moments, where authority was conveyed, in rituals of high visual impact.” Purple became a “sacred color.” In Roman Catholicism, purple is designated for cardinals. Throughout Christendom, purple is associated with Advent and Easter.

In If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die, her fascinating study of the use of color to evoke emotion in films, designer Patti Bellantoni characterizes purple as “a color that inspires associations with the non-physical. It sends a signal that someone or something is going to be transformed. It may not always be someone but something that will die or be lost when purple appears onscreen. It might be love or youth or dream or illusion.”

Major Sources:

Bellantoni, Patti, If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling, Focal Press (an imprint of Elsevier), 2005

Bechtold, Thomas and Rita Mussak (eds.), Handbook of Natural Colorants, Wiley, 2009

Forestry Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Natural Colourants and Dyestuffs, FAO Corporate Repository, 1995

Garfield, Simon, Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour that Changed the World, Faber and Faber, 2000

Highfield, Roger and David Derbyshire, “Cleopatra’s Dye Secret is Revealed,” Telegraph Online, September 12, 2003 (www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3312907/Cleopatras-dye-secret-is-revealed.html)

Stieglitz, Robert R., “The Minoan Origin of Tyrian Purple,” The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 57, No. 1 (March 1994)

Varichon, Anne, Colors: What they Mean and How to Make Them, Abrams, 2006

The copyright of the article Passionate About Purple in Art & Society is owned by Kristin Hanneman. Permission to republish Passionate About Purple in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Purple-Tinted Edomurasaki by Utagawa

Green, Blue and Purple by Joseph Pennell