Yesterday I told you that blue is the colour we apparently love the most. Although it’s not my own personal favourite, I’ve always thought of blue as the colour that has the widest and most characterful range of shades and names within it (apparently, when I was tiny, I’d ask my mum to be VERY specific about blue objects she was describing – ‘Yes, but is it sky blue, turquoise blue, royal blue or maybe [i couldn’t say navy] blue?’ Even now I’m thrilled by blue in all its varied forms and my current obsession is cerulean blue (even my #stansmith laces have been replaced with cerulean velvet). The word cerulean comes from the Latin for dark blue, blue, or blue-green but, unsurprisingly, may originally have come from ‘heaven or ‘sky’. And, like a blue sky, there’s a range within cerulean that takes us on a visual journey from almost greeny turquoise through to azure. One of the most striking places I’ve seen it is in ‘Rimini Blu’ Bitossi pottery (bottom left) which has such a glossy, intense blueness that it looks like it’s been plucked from a twinkling ocean or fallen from an intense summer sky. Which colour do you think has the most exciting range of shades on offer?
Martha, The Colour File x
Colour Experts
8th September '17: The world loves blue
