Nuts and Bolts: Historical Colour.

We can make colour photographs nowadays at the click of a phone, but what could you do if you wanted to describe a colour in the 1500s?

Well, you had to be creative.

This means that in those days there were fabrics glorying in the delightful shades of rat's colour and puke (dull grey and dirty brown, respectively. Worn by poor people), not to mention gooseturd green and dead Spaniard (a pale greyish tan).

If you were rich enough you might wear popingay green, which was a sort of turquoise (though turquoise is rather unusual for popingays, which we nowadays tend to call parrots). You might wear a light blue called plunket, or a pale greenish blue called watchet, combined perhaps with buff-cloured Isabella and red strammel.

Queen Mary Tudor loved crane (a greyish white) and old medley (sorry, no idea). Presumably Queen Mary was not so keen on mortal sin, though her half-sister Elizabeth, one feels, would have appreciated lustie-gallant, which was a light red, or the now unknown colouring of kiss me darling.

And what colour might croyde, mostyns, and friar colour be? What shade exactly is long fine blue? Or sad new colour? How about biscaye? Or devil in the head? What could scratch-face or ape's laugh look like? Or flybert?

Sadly, no one is sure about any of these nowadays. 

So: are we better off with our colour photographs? 

Well, yes, we are, though I do mourn the loss of colour names like celestial.

But, I don't know...I have just adorn my kitchen wall with a paint colour called Mind Your Own Beeswax (it's egg yolk yellow).

And it's pleasing to know that bonkers creativity still lives.

Word To Use Today: a colour word. The origin of the word magenta, for instance, is interesting.