Hyde Park,  London,  summer 2015

Hex colour reference:  #926eae

A colourful note:  this colour is named simply after the violet flower, but has also long been linked with royalty and majesty. Roman emperors were known for their  purple togas, and during the Middle Ages the colour was worn by bishops and university professors and was often used in art to depict the robes of the Virgin Mary.

Strictly speaking, purple and violet are different colours, with violet having its own wavelength on the spectrum of visible light, whereas purple is a combination of blue and red.  Interestingly, in Chinese art, the violet and purple shades are used to represent the harmony of the universe because of the combination of red and blue, or yin and yang.

In the Crayola world, the similarities between violet and purple have added a little confusion to this shade’s history.  Violet has been a Crayola crayon since the company’s origin in 1903 but has suffered a little schizophrenia over the years.  It has been the same shade as the Purple crayon for much of its life, but it seems that from 1949 the crayons bearing the violet name became a different shade and then reverted back to the original in 1957.

Copyright Debbie Smyth, 18 April 2016

Part of Outdoor Wednesday