PURPLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19846, 15 January 1920, Page 7

PURPLE.

WHY ITSIGNIFSES ROYALTY Purple lias come to signify royalty, wealth and power (says the “’Scientific*. American ”). As is tho caso with most phases, it is interesting to trace the one quoted above and see how purple camo to have such associations. Price is of course tho controlling, factor and when the price is such as to limit the use of a material or object to those who are in affluence then these materials and objects readily come to have an idiomatic use. Notwithstanding the high prices of dyes in HIM and 1919 one must,look hack much further in history to find-a, time when dye was really high in price, so high in fact that to “ wear the purple” has ever since meant the command of richer.

Tho ancient purple was the Tyrian purple named after the powerful city of Tyre which like Carthage and Sidon, owed much of its prestige to the purple dye and the cloth coloured by it. According to diaries E. Pcllew, the Latin records show that, no other dye has ever brought so high a price commercially. As the supply diminished the price rose until linen costing £TO per pound sold tor £l3O per pound after dyeing.

From records and enormous piles of shells near the ancient cities of the Mediterranean the source of Tynan purple has been found to be a whitish thick liquid found in a small vein of certain snail-like shell-fish. Only a few drops may be recovered from each fish and 12,000' were required for a quantity of liquid- sufficient for accurate analysis of the active principle. As tho demand increased the number of fish rapidly decreased as their growth is not rapid.

Finally the art was lost and for 200 years was not revived. In KiSo tho ‘Purple fish" was rediscovered when it was found that an Irish woman living by the son was using the whitish liquid tor marking garments for identification after laundering. AVhen this liquid is applied to fibres and then exposed to the sunlight a purple colour is developed. J1 it is not washed with soap a iast- crimson is produced. Tyrian purple was evidently of many shades running from a bluish gray to a brownish, ted through indigo blue, purple and .violet. These shades are so varied that r.o are led to suppose that in time any unusually fine dye was termed purple moaning a quality rather than a definite colour. Thus the use of crimson robes by tho Catholic clergy of to-day has (ionic down as a remnant of tho practice at the time,when the church ■insisted that ns representatives should navo tho same prerogatives as state rulers and princes, . SU(: ' n traditions and history it is not strange that a dye chemist should dream of producing synthetically Thl in r i U ’' 1 ac ? untocl f °r s <> much. Iho shell fish were identified, 12,000 eolected from tho old beds where they had again become numerous, and «, n-inlii an •n iK i ° f tho louring punciplo m the liquid. It had been a?: ;“;,'V' OUIdin somc ionn of S & i 'I m ‘ ! rOV ] th ° oo]o,u ‘ ““d ’tho Sw , 5 i <eVC i° PCd - on ,n>r( ‘ s * '"it that it blionld bo a- bromine derivative was a surprise, for this was the fiL inm hi omino had been found to ho a component of an animal. Chemically speakmg, l;man imperial shades of ionn- ami arc too dul and muddy to suit W . cultivated by modern brilliant aitract|ve ooburs They are. no faslcr to ignt or washing. Modern purple contains exactly tho same atoms as its ancien. prototype, and so the most hnmblo wearer of navy blue is afforded a colon m all respects sujierior to that used tn designate tho Homan consul and the senators of the Homan stale by narrow- borders on th P toga, and employed by the monks of the middle??r S n n s ;! ch \ v °udorful work" as tlm loklon Gospels” in which on pip-ph vellum the written characters arc worked in pure go d leaf.