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Shades of Purple - Artisan Handmade - Three for Thursday

 

Up until the 1850’s, the color purple was most often associated with nobility.  Cyrus, a Persian king, wore a purple tunic, adopting it as his royal uniform. Some Roman emperors even forbade their citizens from wearing purple clothing - under penalty of death. During the Byzantine Empire, rulers wore long purple robes, used purple ink to sign their orders, and their children were described as being “born in the purple.”  Why? The reason was that a pound of purple wool cost more than most people earned in a year! The color purple was produced from a species of rare sea snail, centered in the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre. It took as many as 250,000 of the snails, which produced a purple staining mucus, to yield just one ounce of usable dye. After the fall of the Byzantine empire in the 15th century, the upper class monopoly of purple fabric waned - but it was still expensive.  It wasn’t until the 1850’s with the creation of the first synthetic dyes that the color purple became more widely available.  

 

I, for one, am glad that the color purple is now easily attainable.  With that in mind, this week’s edition of the Three for Thursday blog is titled “Shades of Purple.”  Three items from three handmade artists are featured. The artists are: Cathy of Crafting Memories; Roxanne of watercolorsNmore; and me, Catherine of Shadow Dog Designs.  I hope you enjoy all the different shades of purple found in the beauties shared.

A Bounty of Blues - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade

 

 

The history of blue is very interesting. If you stop and think about it, there is not a lot of natural blue in nature. Most people worldwide do not have blue eyes, blue flowers do not occur without human tinkering, and blue animals are rare -- birds that are blue only live in certain areas. The sky is blue . . . or is it? One interesting theory suggests that before humans had words for the color blue, they actually saw the sky as another color! This theory is supported by the fact that if you never name the color of the sky to a child, and then ask what color it is, he/she will struggle to describe it.  Some describe the sky as colorless and some describe it as white. It seems that only after being told that the sky is blue, and after seeing other blue objects over a period of time, does the sky look blue in their eyes. I wonder now, when I was very young, if I saw the sky as "blue" before or after it was given a color name.  Something to ponder over!

Not So Simply Red - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade - December 2, 2015

With Christmas fast approaching (can you believe it's already December?), the color red was chosen to be highlight of this post.  Just think of everything that red is associated with during this holiday season:  Santa's red suit, Rudolph's red nose, the red of holly berries, red poinsettias, red ribbon, red apples as some of the first Christmas tree decorations centuries ago, and many more.  This post is called "Not So Simply Red" because red is definitely not a simple color.  Just look at all its various blazing shades and nuances of red in the handmade artisan creations below . . . and in the reds you see all through the Christmas season.

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