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Sorry about the scarcity of posts last week. Ferrebeekeeper opted to enjoy an extended Fourth of July by trying not to look at the internet (which paints a less-than-rosy picture of these (dis)United States of America). I was out experiencing summer fun in the real world. But that doesn’t mean we have forgotten about fireworks of the past. We have just moved our perspective farther afield.
Above is the highest resolution image of Eta Carinae taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Between 1838 and 1844 Eta Carinae nearly went supernova and briefly became the fourth brightest star in the heavens (well really the explosion/ejection event occurred 7500 years earlier and the photons only reached Earth in the mid-nineteenth century). Astronomers are still arguing about what exactly transpired then in this messed up stellar system: one particularly dramatic theory is that the unstable blue super giant η Car A devoured a now unknown third star in the system!
In the actual universe Eta Carinae is almost certainly gone and a vast tsunami of strange electromagnetic radiation is rushing towards Earth…but nobody knows if this is true or when the supernova afterwash will get here. Astronomers recently pointed Hubble at the Homunculus Nebula, the hourglass shaped cloud of matter which expands approximately one light year from the binary Eta Carinae system and took the color enhanced ultraviolet photo above. It is beautiful but ominous…let’s keep it in the back of our minds as we go about our little lives. This universe is a strange & savage place.
Hold everything! Today is the day when Pantone announces their trademarked “Color of the Year” for 2018. To quickly recap, Pantone is a private color-consulting company which helps consumer-facing firms select yearly color palates which work together at the store. When you go to a mall (kids, this was a large building containing many individual different retail stores) and see that all of the clothes and gadgets are the same colors, Pantone is behind the convergence. They chose a real winner last year—a magnificent mid-tone green that looked like it came straight from the idealized cabbage patches of some fantasy “old country” (but also simultaneously seemed to reference money and environmentalism). Can this year continue the trend or will we face another perplexing chicken-liver year (or the wishy-washy dichotomy of election year 2016 when we were presented with two opposite gendered tones)? Without further ado, the Pantone Color of 2018 is…“Ultra violet” a bold rich purple! (maybe you already guessed based on the bar of pure purple above).
I love this color. Purple is one of my favorite colors (it might be my favorite) and this tone evokes the best things about purple! It reminds me of a medieval king’s tunic or a spooky Queen Anne house in a Halloween poster. Kudos to Pantone for the solid choice. We will say nothing of Grimace and the shadow his amorphous purple form has cast over a generation of culture mavens and style moguls.
For its part, Pantone seems to be making a quiet and uncontroversial political statement with its selection. The executive director of the Pantone color institute spells this out in her pronouncement: “It’s also the most complex of all colors, because it takes two shades that are seemingly diametrically opposed — blue and red — and brings them together to create something new.” The company’s literature further emphasizes purple’s mystical and cosmic connotations…and how dear it was to beloved yet lost entertainment icons like David Bowie and Prince.
Pantone also claims that “ultraviolet” evokes an idealized future (which makes me wonder if they have read “A Clockwork Orange”). Maybe they are subconsciously projecting the preferences of a highly networked consulting company of global influence since Ultraviolet is a purple which definitely leans towards blue. It’s fun to reminisce about all of the beloved icons and styles from the past and to make metaphors out of color, yet the colors of the year really do reflect larger patterns and trends. When the economy is doing well, Pantone executives and art-directors feel free to choose more bold and colorful choices. These become increasingly extravagant until a recession comes along—when they all get reset to monotones, dust-colors, and similarly basic palate choices. Ultraviolet is clearly leaning towards the more flamboyant side (I seem to recall a similar dot-com purlple back in the nineties just before the bubble burst. This bold purple reminds us to look towards a brighter future and to enjoy the sugar rush, but it makes me wonder if there aren’t some grays and beiges in the immediate future.
Cinereous Bunting (Emberiza cineracea) Photo copyright Mark S Jobling.
In Latin, ashes are called cinis and , similarly, the Latin word for ashy gray or ash-like is cinereous. English borrowed this word in the 17th century and it has long been used to describe the color which is dark gray tinged with brown shininess. As with many Latin color names (like fulvous and icterine) the word cinereous is often used in the scientific name of birds which are very prone to be this drab color.
Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus)–photo by Esquire Magazine(really?)
However, the concept of color is not quite as simple as it first seems. Different items produce ocular sensations as a result of the way they reflect or emit light, yet different wavelengths of light are visible to different eyes. Humans are trichromats. We have photoreceptor cells capable of seeing blue, green, and red. Most birds are tetrachromats and can apprehend electromagnetic wavelengths in the ultraviolet spectrum as well. Many of the dull cinereous birds we witness may glow and sparkle with colors unknown to the human eye and unnamed by the human tongue.
The wing of an owl to us
The wing of an owl to ultraviolet film
Lightly purples antique commemorative platter
In the 1860s the formula for making pressed glassware changed. Manganese was substituted for lead to act as a stabilizer and to make the glass brighter and clearer. Nearly every major American glass manufacturer used manganese dioxide for such a purpose until 1915, when industrial chemists realized that selenium made for a better stabilizing/clarifying agent.
Manganese glass under blacklight
Because of the nature of manganese, the glassware manufactured during the late nineteenth century has some unique properties. Original manganese glassware glows brightly under a blacklight (although vaseline glass, glass tinted yellow with uranium does the same thing). When exposed to the sun over the years, as in a bright kitchen or a window, manganese glass takes on a slight amethyst purple cast. Glass objects with a faint hint of sun purple betray their provenance, but they also lose some value–since antiques dealers regard the effect as “discoloration”.
Vintage “Sun Purple” teacup
However, some people became obsessed by the sun purple effect and put their antique glassware outside for months in order for it to fully turn cloudy purple in the sunlight. This “solarized” glassware could then be sold to novice antiques collectors (often with a little card explaining “sun-purpling”). Dealers realized that the causative factor behind the color change was ultraviolet radiation, and so instead of putting glass outside they exposed it to radiation from UV sterilizers (a common anti-microbial tool in bio labs and hospitals). As you read this, somewhere out there is a room full of ornate glass pitchers, sugar dishes, and goblets being irradiated with blistering ultraviolet waves!
A germicidal cabinet!
Seasoned glass dealers are aghast at the practice, which leaves everything a murky washed-out pale purple. Additionally there is glass currently being deliberately manufactured to resemble the manganese purple solarized glass. To confuse the issue even further, there is also glass manufactured in a robust shade of purple (for people who like purple) which is named “amethyst” glass.
Antique “amethyst glass” pedestal vases (always meant to be purple)
ferrebeekeeper 