If you were a girl child in the 1980s, then your favorite color was violet purple—and also carnation pink. At least these were my favorite colors, and the favorite colors of all my little girl friends. I don’t know if I actually liked them though, because I do not like these colors today and so perhaps my love of purple and pink as a child was the result of societal pressures to conform, or what have you. Also, if you had a girl child, you’d dress them up in pink and purple clothes, and set them loose on the world like a pack of little, grape jelly-looking monsters.
Violet purple is the color of not so many things found in the natural world. Of course, the color is in the violet flower and the Purple Astor, but not so much in animals or birds. Violet purple is also the color of the amethyst mineral.
The god Amethystos was the Greek god invoked by the amethyst. Wearing an amethyst was supposed to protect the wearer from drunkenness resulting from drinking too much wine. Wine, also purple, was perhaps canceled out by the color of the amethyst, and turned to water—who knows really. A miracle.
The other miracle involving water and wine was reported to be the first miracle of Christ, in which it is said that he turned the mikvah water in the cisterns into really good wine. Some might find this “miracle” offensive, since those cisterns were full of water for ritual purification, and were not to be messed with—especially not turned into a wine for a wedding.
Now, I’m going to veer sharply away from the miracles performed by this man and steer toward the miracle performed by Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty Woman.
In the miraculous transformation of Julia Roberts’ character in that movie, in the scene everyone can remember, when she’s at the polo match in the polka-dotted brown and white dress? Brown is one of the colors that goes into Violet Purple, which is why I equate that movie with the color purple, even though I did a quick Google search and did not find a purple outfit to mention here (it was a quick search though). How funny is color theory? Very.
Violet Purple contains a slight amount of brown, along with Berlin Blue and regular old red. Brown is basically a giant cancelling out of colors, which is why, as a kid, if you mixed every color of PlayDoh together, it would turn brown.
But, this color, a foundational color of Werner’s, is primarily made of equal parts of the red and Berlin Blue, which, in turn, cancel out the yellow end of the brown and replace it with this kind of warm purple. The violet part of violet purple is in the amount of black removed, which is very little.
Velvet Black, another one of Werner’s foundational colors, contains a slight amount of reddish-brown, which works similarly in the case of Violet Purple, to give it a bit of a vibration that is the result of a higher percentage of colors added, in consideration of the 360 degree color wheel. My source for this fantastic information comes from a communications company that writes publications about internet use (see Source Material). And while I focus on color subtraction, the four color process, December.com focuses on color addition, the three color process for web use, that is RGB, and kind of drives me nuts in a way, because I have to think backwards.
All of you hummingbirds out there: I hope you have a great day.