HeeHoo and I have had a fifty year long disagreement over a particular shade of green. He calls it blue I call it green. There are obviously colours of blue that we do agree on, but those shades of turquoise, emerald, sea green, are very challenging. He feels he is right, (not only because he normally is), but because he is a paint and fabric colour chemist and he 'knows his colours'!! I on the other hand, tell him that my inner soul can differentiate between greens and blues!!
Colour occupies a unique place in the average person's worldview. On one hand, colour is intrinsically subjective. We all experience different emotions when we look at various colours. But on the other hand, colour is inherently tied to physics and mathematics. Every colour occupies a specific numerical wavelength apparently...
Blue is possibly the colour we see most of all around us in nature, but some scientists believe that the colour blue couldn't be seen by the earliest humans. In fact, at first, it is thought that they could only see black, white, red, and only after some time, yellow and green. In fact blue is the first colour that was synthetically made. Egyptian blue is was made 2000 years ago BC and was made by crushing and combining limestone, sand, and a mineral that contains copper.
Some suggest that the poet Homer alluded to this in his epic poem the Odyssey, with his description of the sea as being 'wine red.'
Blue affects mood, emotion and behaviour Blue is most often used in spaces where people need to rest because it makes us feel relaxed and calm.
Green of course is the next colour that we are most familiar with, but it's not even really a colour Green is only a primary colour of light and the only way to create green from scratch is to mix blue and yellow.
The first colours used by humans came from natural pigments like red ochre and yellow ochre, which were derived from iron-rich soil and clay and used in prehistoric cave paintings over 50,000 years ago. Our earliest examples of the colour red come from cave paintings which date back to 16,500 B.C.
The history of purple dates back to the bronze age. Around the 14th century BCE, the city of Tyre began producing a distinctly beautiful dye. Tyrians would create this dye from a few different shellfish found in the region. But even a small quantity of purple dye would call for thousands of shellfish to use as an ingredient.
It's said that 10,000 shellfish were needed to make even 1 gram of purple dye. At one point we have historical records showing that the dye was valued at three times its weight in gold. And pre-dyed wool was priced at about the same as its equivalent weight in gold. This means that purple dyed wool was quite literally worth its weight in gold.
Here in Zimbabwe we are so blessed with colours, our summers are vibrant in blues, greens, reds and every conceivable shade from natures palette. Walking yesterday I was mesmerised by the purple carpets that the Jacaranda trees were dropping. If the Phoenicians could do it thousands of years ago, why can't we gather these beautiful buds and make our own pigment from them
Then in Winter we flourish under the striking golds, reds, browns, tawny, mustard and ochres of the dry veld.
For centuries, European artists used a brown pigment known as 'mummy brown' or 'Egyptian brown,' made by grinding up material taken from mummified human and animal remains. Recipes varied, but some called for mummy material - including flesh, bones, wrappings, or substances scraped from inside the body - to be ground with a nut oil. The resulting warm, translucent brown was particularly useful for painting shadows, flesh tones, and glazes.
Mummies were also once sold as medicine.
Long before European artists painted with mummies, patients swallowed them. . By the 12th century, powdered mummy was being sold in Europe as a treatment for bruises, bleeding, and numerous other ailments. Demand eventually inspired counterfeiters to pass off recently deceased people as ancient mummies. Suspicions that mummy medicine could spread plague helped discredit the medicine thank goodness.
But back to my preamble, the new shirt I bought for HeeHoo, is it blue or is it green?