Purple is a color that often evokes feelings of royalty, spirituality, and mystery. It’s a color found frequently in nature, though its status as a “natural” color has sometimes come into question. Some argue that true purple pigments don’t occur naturally and were only developed through human invention. So is purple really a man-made color?
The History of Purple
Purple has long been associated with royalty and high status. In ancient times, Tyrian purple dye derived from sea snails was highly prized and could only be afforded by the elite. The rarity and expense of purple fabrics gave rise to the idea of purple as a “royal color.”
However, purple also had spiritual connotations. In Catholicism, it represents penitence and mourning. In New Age beliefs, it represents wisdom, creativity, independence, and magic.
Purple fabric dyes were originally derived from natural sources. The Phoenicians extracted a brilliant purple dye called Tyrian or Royal purple from a species of sea snail known as Hexaplex trunculus. Other shades could be made from other shellfish species, and from the roots of plants such as woad and madder.
However, these dyes were limited in availability and quite costly. This led chemists and paint manufacturers to seek ways to create synthetic purple dyes and pigments to increase availability and reduce cost.
Key Developments in Synthetic Purples
One of the earliest synthetic purple dyes was mauveine, accidentally discovered by William Henry Perkin in 1856. Perkin was attempting to synthesize quinine, an antimalarial drug, when he obtained a purple substance from coal tar residues. This dye democratized purple clothing, as it could be produced cheaply and in large quantities.
Other important early synthetic purple dyes include methyl violet and dahlia mauve, discovered in the 1890s. These pioneering synthetics sparked a “mauve decade” in fashion.
In the early 20th century, chemists developed rhodamine dyes, fluorescent purples. One of the first, rhodamine B, was patented in 1919. These vivid pigments are used in cosmetics, pens, and fluorescent tags.
Further work in the 1930s and 40s yielded pigments such as manganese violet and quinacridone violet. Manganese violet is notable for its lightfastness and weather resistance. It’s used in paints, plastics, and cosmetics.
Modern chemistry has made many more purple pigments available across a wide range of hues and applications. Some examples include:
| Pigment | Date Introduced | Uses |
|---|---|---|
| Dioxazine purple | 1935 | Artist paints, automotive coatings |
| Perylene purple | 1991 | Plastics, printing inks |
| Ultramarine violet | 2000 | Cosmetics, artist colors |
Natural Sources of Purple
While synthetic pigments expanded the availability of purple, natural sources still hold an enduring appeal. Many of these were used in ancient times as dyes and have remained important for artisanal textiles.
Shellfish: The murex sea snails that produced Tyrian purple are still valued today. Though labor intensive to extract, murex dyes produce deep, rich purples with excellent lightfastness.
Lichens: Primitive fungi called lichens can produce purple dyes, often used for wool and silk. Common examples include orchil and cudbear.
Flowers: Many blossoms bear purple pigments, especially violets, hibiscus, and irises. However, flower dyes generally fade quickly.
Fruits: Mulberries, figs, elderberries, and other fruits contain anthocyanin pigments that yield purple and mauve hues.
Minerals: Some minerals and clays inherently have a purple coloration due to their geological origins and can be used as pigments.
Inks: The ink of sea snails from the Muricidae family has an enduring purple color and is still used by artists today.
The Science of Purple
What makes something purple? Scientifically, purple arises in human vision when our eyes detect red and blue light simultaneously.
The human eye contains cone cells that detect different wavelengths of light. Red cones are sensitive to long wavelengths around 650 nm, while blue cones pick up shorter 450 nm wavelengths. When our eyes see both wavelengths at once, our brain interprets the combination as purple.
This means purples are not spectrally pure colors like red or blue – they don’t have a single wavelength. Rather, purples strike a balance between the two ends of the visible color spectrum.
Purple pigments selectively absorb some wavelengths while reflecting red and blue back to our eyes. For instance:
- Manganese violet absorbs greens and yellows, reflecting back reds and blues.
- Heliotrope reflects back deep red and mid-range blue wavelengths.
- Lavender shades reflect brighter reds and light blues.
The specific wavelengths reflected determine the exact purple shade we see.
So Is Purple “Man-Made”?
In a strict sense, all colors are a construct of our visual system and not inherent properties of materials. However, purple has a stronger claim to being “man-made” than most colors.
Arguments for purple as a man-made color include:
- There are no pure purple wavelengths in the visible spectrum – it only exists as a combination.
- No purple materials reflect just a single wavelength, unlike blue or red.
- Many purple pigments like mauveine and manganese violet were chemically engineered.
- Purple rarely appears in nature as a pigment rather than a structural color.
However, there are also counter-arguments:
- Purple emerges from the visible spectrum in a predictable way, based on human vision.
- Many purple materials existed before synthetic pigments, like murex snail dye.
- Purple is perceived in rainbows, which occur naturally.
- Purple flowers, fruits, and minerals do have naturally occurring purple pigments.
In the end, purple’s status may just depend on semantics around “man-made.” Early synthetic dyes certainly allowed more access to purple. But the color itself arises from human visual perception, not human engineering. Purple blurs the lines between artificial and natural color.
Conclusion
Purple occupies a special place among colors. Historically prized yet elusive, it defied largescale production until modern chemistry. However, even with synthetic pigments, natural associations with purple – from mollusks to minerals – persist.
While not spectrally pure, purple is real in human visual experience. Engineered pigments may broaden purple’s availability, but the color itself springs from the mind’s combination of two fundamentals – red and blue.
So is purple man-made or natural? The answer lies somewhere in between. Purple is an interpretation of nature seen through the lens of human vision. As physicist Hermann von Helmholtz stated, “The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the objective constitution of the coloured object alone.” Rather, it arises in the “reciprocal action” between light, object, and eye.
Through this interactive process, purple takes on a meaning unique among colors – neither purely invented nor purely found, but discovered in the meeting of mind and nature.