Mid-Week Mutterings - Purple is "In" Again (Finally!)

I love purple. It was one of my High School colors and I wasn't all that crazy about it then, but later in life I realized that dark, jewel tone purples and I went very well together. Yeah, I had my "colors done" back in the 80's - didn't everyone my age do that? I was a classic Winter and purple was the color that looked best with my skin tone and hair.

Some years it's almost impossible to find anything in purple. Lavender maybe, lilac and mauve, possibly, but a rich dark purple, not so much. This year, though, I've seen a lot of mannequins in the department stores dressed in all sorts of gorgeous purple pieces and accessories. The Pantone fall color report (this link is to a pdf file, don't click unless you want to open a pdf) features a color they call "purple heart" which is a bit pale, but I see other colors accented with a much darker purple as well.

And Sunday's Emmy red carpet show - tons of purple! Some purple gowns got 'worst' clucks from the press, (things like 'grape soda' were said) but purple was certainly a color choice for the TV celebrities Sunday evening.

There are some wonderful purple stones, amethyst, purple chalcedony, charoite, flourite, Iolite, lepidolite, sugilite and tanzanite. Swarovski and other crystal and glass bead suppliers, have many shades of purple to choose from, too.

You're probably familiar with the story of how purple dye was very expensive and considered a royal color, as only the very wealthy could afford it. It was a red-purple dye which came from the secretions of a mollusc called Murex brandaris. During the Middle Ages the knowledge of how to obtain that specific purple was allegedly lost and royal blue seems to have replaced its use.

Murex brandaris - Photo: Source Luis Fernández García LP / 2005-09-09, via Wikipedia
Permission to use under Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike 2.1 Spain" Licence

I've recently finished and listed a copper and purple two-strand necklace using amethyst and charoite. Not only do I like the colors, but I'm rather pleased with myself at the design, which lends itself to a number of asymmetrical conformations. This one is my favorite look, but it can be worn 5 or 6 (maybe more) ways, which I show in the pictures at ArtFire.

I'm almost out of charoite, although I have some really lovely diagonal drilled squares still to figure out a design for. They'll be perfect for earrings/bracelets.

What's your favorite purple stone or is it a color you typically avoid?

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