Color Purple

Have you ever seen a purple finch? If so, you may have wondered why they are they called ‘purple finches’ when they are crimson-colored, not purple. Roger Tory Peterson wrote that the male purple finch (Carpodacus purpureus) was "like a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice." Purpureus is Latin for crimson, which is closer to reality than purple.

From my discipline, I have learned that “purple” is a nonspectral color, comprised of a mixture of both red and blue lights. I have often noted that persons often think of “purple” as being any dark blue, violet, or indigo color. I started to wonder if “purple” properly (historically) referred to a mixture in which the red rather than the blue predominated. I have done some Internet research on this and found that, in fact, this appears to be the case.

Mary Jo Bratton’s “East Carolina University: The Formative Years, 1907-1982” noted, on page 129, that in 1909 the students at ECU chose as the school colors “old gold” and “royal purple.” This combination had been nominated by Addie Rollins Fields, of Bethel, NC. Now that really got my interest (yes, I can get obsessed with trivial matters). You see, “royal purple” is the phrase most often used to refer to that purple which is essentially crimson, not a bluish shade at all. Now I am curious regarding whether the original “royal purple” of ECU was the modern “purple” or was it really the historical “royal purple,” a crimson color. I asked Suellyn Lathrop, University Archivist, about this. Here is her response:

From: Lathrop, <mailto:LATHROPS@MAIL.ECU.EDU> Suellyn A
To: 'Karl L. Wuensch' <mailto:wuenschk@earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 11:20 AM
Subject: RE: ECU School Colors

Thank you for your question regarding ECU school colors. I believe that you are right. I think that the royal purple was a more reddish purple than is currently used at ECU. When Mary Jo Bratton wrote her history of the university she attempted to find that color and use it on the cover of the book. The color is not a standard used in book binding so the cover is not quite the right color, but as close as they could get

Unfortunately we do not have any memorabilia or color photos that show anything with the original school colors.

My friend Bill Grossnickle loaned me a copy of Mary Jo Bratton’s text which had not even been unwrapped yet. The color of the binding in not really crimson, but it is not the modern purple either. It does impress me as having a raspberry color, like that of a purple finch, but with more light blue tints that the finch. In brighter light the light blue becomes more prominent, as in this flash photo:

Colors

The school colors for East Carolina University - purple and gold - go back to the time when the first students arrived on campus in 1909. ECU historian Dr. Mary Jo Bratton, the author of "East Carolina University The Formative Years 1907 - 1982," said the selection of school colors represented one of the first traditions established by the students. In the early fall of 1909 the administration asked students for their suggestions on school colors. Old gold and royal purple won the vote.

In the following year, the colors carried over to the school's first baseball team, a club team, that won most of its games. According to Bratton the opening game produced a 6 - 2 win for East Carolina against a local Greenville team. The newspaper account of the game credited the effective cheering of the young ladies of the school for "winning the victory for the purple and gold."

MUREX SHELLS
Family: Muricidae. There are 700 known species in this beautiful family of shells. They are noted for their unique shape and curving spines. The Mollusk is carnivorous and typically feeds on bivalves, shrimp, and sponge among other creatures of similar size. They can be found in sand or mud flats, and on coral reefs. When the frond-like spines are coated with sea moss, the shell may be completely camouflaged amid rocks or on reefs. Interesting Facts: The crimson color of royal purple was created by the Phoenicians by using the Murex brandaris shell. The rare and brilliant color was used by the emperors of Rome. At that time, the dye cost the equivalent of $10,000 a pound.

"Purple" versus "Purpur". Originally "Purpur" is a colouring matter made of the so called Purpurschnecke (purple-snail). The purple fluid was of a slightly bluish, brilliant medium dark red (a nice interpretation, isn't it?) colour shade and extremely rare, so it became the colour of rulers and kings.
Ralf Stelter, 27 June 1999

Purple was indeed extracted from the marine gastropod mollusc "Murex", which has a spiny shell and lives near the coasts of Mediterranean sea.(length up to 8 cm for the largest species). The use of Murex as a dye is attested since the first half of second millennium at Ugarit, but mainly during the first millennium on the coast of Phenicia, where Tyr and Sidon exerted a monopole on fabric dying. These cities were stopovers on the Silk Road not only for transportation reasons, but also because silk could be dyed there. To extract the dye, shells were broken and the molluscs were macerated in basins. The obtained dye could vary from pink to violet through crimson by using different sun-drying times. Piles of shells have been found near ancient dying places near Tyr and Sidon, and also Athenes and Pompei. Basins of the ancient Carthagenese city of Kerkouane are still coloured by red dye.

Because of resistance of the dye and difficulty in harvesting the animal, purple fabrics were expensive and highly estimated. They were only used for the cloth of noblemen, kings, priests and judges. The purple colour, similar to blood, symbol of life, became a sign of temporal and spiritual power. Under the Roman Republic, the chief-commanders of the armies wore the "paludamentum", a purple coat. The toga, sign of Roman citizenship, had a purple stripe. The toga of triumphators was fully purple and had a golden border. The tunic worn by Senators under the toga had a wide purple stripe, and was called "laticlava". The stripe of the knights' tunic ("angusticlava") was narrower. Under Roman Empire, the "paludamentum" was the privilege of the Emperor. The Roman Catholic Church still uses the purple colour for cardinals ("pourpre cardinalice"). Nowadays, the main component of the dye (dibromo-indigo) can easily be obtained through chemical synthesis.

Royal Purple

A color of antiquity described as a crimson (not to be confused with modern purple, which is basically dark blue with some red in it). The dye comes from a tiny shellfish, the Murex, found in the Mediterranean Sea. In the days of antiquity the finest royal purple was said to come from Tyre in Phoenicia.

The Imperial Purple
Purple (purpura) was the color of the dye extracted from a Mediterranean shell-fish, of the genus Murex. The city of Tyr in Phoenicia was especially famous for producing the dye. The color was of many possibile shades depending on the actual production process, but it was described as "blood-red". One of its attractions was that it was the only color-fast dye known to the Ancients: you could wash your toga many times and it would still be bright red. It was also expensive: the combination of the two made it a status symbol from very early times, through the Greeks and to the Romans. By the late Empire, some types of purple were reserved for the Imperial family and officials. After the conquest of Tyr by Arabs in the 7^th c. the manufacturing continued in the Byzantine Empire, and they supplied courts and Church with died wool and silk. After the fall of Byzantium in 1453 the supply disappeared, and in 1464 the Pope authorized the use of cochineal as an ersatz to die cardinals' and archbishops' robes. It also seems to be about that time that the meaning of purple started slipping from crimson-red or blood-red to our modern mix of red and blue.

The shell-fish Murex still exists, but there are several varieties, and in spite of Plinus' explanations it is not quite clear how the dye was made. There have been modern attempts at duplicating the color, but the pictures I saw were not very convincing, and the colors ranged from orange to violet.