#on colour

[llovelymoonn]

blue by rae kolarova

ida \\ magpie \\ bleu indigo \\ bleue de toi \\ vadrouille \\ cordon d’argent \\ avril en février \\ alice \\ l’archipel en blanc \\ l’archipel en blanc 

orange || yellow || purple ||

kofi

[fashionbooksmilano]

Tricia Guild on Colour

Decoration Furnishing Display

Text by Tricia Guild with Elizabeth Wilhide

Special Photography by David Montgomery

Conran Octopus, London 1992, 192 pages, 24x28cm., ISBN  978-1850293996

euro 30,00

email if you want to buy :[email protected]

Tricia Guild examines colour theory as well as its myriad applications. Seven individual chapters then take a detailed look at the colour families - white, blue, green, yellow, natural, terracotta and red. Each chapter of the book analyzes specific examples of good colour application, providing colour boards for specially created interiors and giving examples and suggestions for colour combinations and contrasts. Finally, a section of colour palettes provides an inspirational guide to choosing Tricia Guild's colour schemes for a variety of interiors in your own home.

02/10/21

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[mesogeios]

“Over the last decade, I have learned to appreciate the textures and rhythms of the later months of the year. Russet is the color of November in Maine. The color that emerges when all the more spectacular leaves have fallen: the yellow coins of the white birch, the big, hand-shaped crimson leaves of the red maple, the papery pumpkin-hued spears of the beech trees. The oaks are always the last to shed their plumage, and their leaves are the dullest color. They’re the darkest, the closest to brown. But if you pay attention, you’ll see that they’re actually quite pretty. Russet is a subtle color, complicated by undertones of orange and purple. Indeed, according to some color wheel systems, “russet” is the name given to the tertiary color created by mixing those two secondary colors. Its only companions in this category are slate (made from purple and green) and citron (made from green and yellow). Like russet, citron and slate occur often in the natural world. Our Earth is a blue marble if you get far enough away, but from up close, it’s so very brown, so often gray.

This may explain why many cultures think of russet and similar dull reds as neutral hues, akin to the monochrome scale of white, black, and the innumerable shades between. True reds, the crimsons and vermilions and scarlets, have historically been associated with fire, blood, and power. In Red: The History of a Color, Michel Pastoureau explains that, for thousands of years, red was “the only true color.” He continues, “as much on the chronological as hierarchical level, it outstripped all others.” In ancient Greece, high priests and priestesses dressed in crimson, as did (they imagined) the gods themselves. In contrast, the dull reds, the brown reds, have been understood as “emblematic of peasantry and impoverishment,” claims Victoria Finlay in An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour. Finlay files red ocher among the browns—the ruddy pigment used in the caves of Lascaux—which is perhaps where it belongs. Perhaps that’s where russet belongs, too. [...]

It seems likely that russet, as a word, is an offshoot of red (Old French rousset from Latin russus, “reddish”). But russet means more than red-like, red-adjacent. It also means rustic, homely, rough. It also evokes mottled, textured, coarse. The word describes a quality of being that can affect people as well as vegetables. Apples can be russet, when they have brown patches on their skin. Potatoes famously are russet; their skin often has that strange texture that makes it impossible to tell where the earth ends and the root begins. There are russet birds and russet horses—it’s an earthy word that fits comfortably on many creatures. For Shakespeare, it was a color of poverty and prudence, mourning and morning. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Biron imagines a life without the finer things, without silks and taffeta, a life of sacrifice undertaken to prove his love. The color of his penance? Russet.

“and I here protest, By this white glove;—how white the hand, God knows!— Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express’d In russet yeas and honest kersey noes: And, to begin, wench,—so God help me, la!— My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.”

Just a few decades after this was written, in a country not too far away, Peter Paul Rubens was painting with brilliant crimson and shocking vermilion. Rubens was a devout Roman Catholic, a religion that embraced sumptuous fabrics and rich colors. A generation later, another northern painter would rise to prominence: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. While Catholic Rubens loved shocking reds, rich blues, and even sunny yellows, Protestant Rembrandt painted with a far more restrained palette. Many of his most famous paintings (including his self portraits) are predominantly brown and gray. And when he did use color, Rembrandt very often reached for russet, auburn, fulvous, and tawny. Reds that leaned brown, and browns that leaned red. Sometimes, he brought in a splash of crimson to tell the viewer where they should focus (the vibrant sash in Night Watch, the cloaks in Prodigal Son), and sometimes he let soft, misty yellow light bathe his bucolic landscapes. His work was earthy, imbued with the quiet chill of early November [...]”

— Katy Kelleher, “Russet, the Color of Peasants, Fox Fur, and Penance” from The Paris Review

[llovelymoonn]

henri matisse on red

the red studio (1911) \\ the dessert: harmony in red (1908) \\ red interior, still life on a blue table (1947) \\ large red interior (1948) \\ still life with a red rug (1906) \\ red rug

orange || yellow || green || blue || purple

kofi

[llovelymoonn]

monet on purple

waterloo bridge, hazy sunshine (1903) \\ houses of parliament, sunlight effect (1900-01) \\ water-lilies (1917-19) \\ lilac irises \\ île aux orties near vernon \\ the four trees (1891) \\ morning on the seine near giverny (1897) \\ the grand canal, venice (1908)

yellow ||

kofi

[llovelymoonn]

orange by holly warburton

@holly-warbs

yellow || purple ||

kofi

[llovelymoonn]

green by cuno amiet

sunspots \\ the painter \\ the orchard \\ apfelernte \\ the trees in the garden. oswald. \\ strawberry girls \\ dancing bathers \\ picture of giovanni giacometti \\ garden \\ richesse du soir

orange || yellow || blue || purple

kofi