In ancient Rome, purple was the color of royalty, a designator of status. And while purple is flashy and pretty, it was more important at the time that purple was expensive. Purple was expensive, because
To make the first purple shades, dye-makers had to crush the shells of a species of sea snail, extract its purple mucus and then expose it to the sun for a specific period. The process made the colour so scarce and expensive that wearing it was a symbol of status and wealth.
It was also expensive: Diocletian's Edict of Maximum Prices issued in the year 301 set the limit on a pound of purple wool at 50,000 denarii, the same value as a pound of gold. Books, too, written on purple were high-status objects.
In Rome during the 1st century CE, a pound of Tyrian purple dye cost about half a Roman soldier's annual salary, or the equivalent of the cost of a diamond engagement ring today. Tyrian purple dye was so costly because it was difficult to make.
This deep, rich purple dye made from this snail became known as Tyrian purple or imperial purple. Tyrian purple was made from the ink sac and took thousands of shells to obtain enough dye to work with. One ounce cost the equivalent of 3000 pounds sterling in today's money, or $4,500 in US dollars.
Google "the most expensive pigment" and you'll find that Lapis Lazuli is believed to be the most expensive pigment ever created. It was pricier than its weight in gold.
The Middle Ages and Renaissance
While purple was worn less frequently by Medieval and Renaissance kings and princes, it was worn by the professors of many of Europe's new universities.
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker has been banned in schools all over the country since 1984, due to its graphic sexual content and situations of violence and abuse. While “The Color Purple” contains a lot of controversial content, it's necessary to the story and is what makes the book so real and unique.
Purple is relatively rare in nature, and the exotic colour has accordingly been considered sacred. The word actually derives from the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured from mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail. The dye came from the Phoenician trading city of Tyre, now in modern-day Lebanon.
Queen Elizabeth I's Sumptuary Laws forbid anyone but close relatives of the royal family to wear purple, so the color not only reflected the wearer's wealth but also their regal status. The hue became more accessible to lower classes about a century and a half ago.
Talk about sticker shock. Purple's exclusivity carried over to the Elizabethan era (1558 to 1603), during which time everyone in England had to abide by Sumptuary Laws, which strictly regulated what colors, fabrics and clothes could and couldn't be worn by different classes within English society.
Current producers extract and harvest Tyrian purple from the murex shellfish in much the same way as the ancient Phoenicians. Thousands --- approximately 10,000 or (54 kilograms (119 lb.)
The Color Purple by Allice Walker has been banned in schools across the United States sine 1984, just two years after the book was published. The book was banned for its sexual content and situations of abuse and domestic violence.
Criticisms of The Color Purple
But what these critics seemed most concerned with was the portrayal of Black men in the novel. Alice Walker's detractors claimed that the representations of Black men in The Color Purple were stereotypical, and that there was an overemphasis of Black male brutality within the novel.
Purple as the royal color started with ancient monarchies. The color was difficult to produce, which made it expensive and available only to upper society. Rulers wore purple robes and used purple ink to sign their edicts. Some Roman emperors penalized their citizens by death for wearing purple garments.
Eighteen-year-old student William Henry Perkin created purple in March 1856 during a failed chemistry experiment to produce quinine, a substance used to treat malaria. Perkin instead invented the first synthetic dye. He originally called it “Tyrian purple,” but then settled on the French word “mauve.”
Composition and Properties of Tyrian Purple
It is the oldest, most well-known, most expensive, most prestigious and most vivid dye or pigment. Tyrian purple comes from marine molluscs of the Muricidae family and the colour precursors are contained in the hypobranchial gland.
Purple is common in plants, largely thanks to a group of chemicals called anthocyanins. When it comes to animals, however, purple is more difficult to produce. Mammals are unable to create pigments for purple, blue or green. Birds and insects are only able to display purple through structural colouration.
Red-green and yellow-blue are the so-called "forbidden colors." Composed of pairs of hues whose light frequencies automatically cancel each other out in the human eye, they're supposed to be impossible to see simultaneously. The limitation results from the way we perceive color in the first place.
The novel was officially banned after it was labeled obscene, and unsold copies were confiscated. The story line traces three generations of the Brangwen family in the Midlands of England from 1840 to 1905.
The book has been banned from school libraries in the United States between 1984 to 2013. Parents are the most common group attempting to remove the novel from schools.
The word “purple” comes from the Old English word “purpul,” which is from the Latin “purpura” and from the ancient Greek “porphyra.” This was the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity.
No color has arguably done so more than the color purple. Specifically, Tyrian purple, the production of which was a closely guarded secret for millennia, making the dye the rarest and most expensive color in history.
Tyrian purple (Ancient Greek: πορφύρα porphúra; Latin: purpura), also known as, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye, is a reddish-purple natural dye.