Summer colour

Our garden has been a colourful delight of late – a welcome change from our cold, wet and grey spring.

I’ve always been intrigued with the evocative names that are used to describe a particular colour. This love affair with language, colour, and design, first started when I was a teenager after I saw the captivating Winsor & Newton ink packaging. I was smitten! How clever to use a spider on their bottle of Black Indian Ink – so named as black ink has been in use in India since at least the 4th century BCE. And a cute squirrel on their bottle of Burnt Sienna – named for the clay Tuscan soil that surrounds the town of Siena.

Many colour names are derived from flowers and fruit of the same name: lemon, orange, rose, plum, honeydew, raspberry, peach, bittersweet, mustard, and pink. The colour pink is named after the flowers called pinks (Dianthus). The name derives from the frilled edge of the flowers – like pinking shears that create a zig-zagged line when cutting cloth.

Some colour names are derived from historical events or locations: British Racing Green, Thulian Pink, Venetian Red, and Eton Blue.

I hope your summer is colourful with lots of time to catch up on reading while sipping some pink lemonade.