Shades of purple

Tyrian purple: Classical antiquity See also under Purple#In art, history and fashion the section "In prehistory and the ancient world: Tyrian purple" clad in Tyrian purple; 6th-century mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale {{Infobox color "Tyrian purple" is the contemporary English name of the color that in Latin is denominated "purpura". Other contemporary English names for purpura are "imperial purple" and "royal purple". The English name "purple" itself originally denominated the specific color purpura. Purpura is the color of a dye extracted from a mollusk found on the shores of the city of Tyre in ancient Phoenicia (contemporarily in Lebanon), which color in classical antiquity was a symbol of royalty and political authority because only the very wealthy could afford it, including the Roman Emperors. Therefore, Tyrian purple was also denominated "imperial purple". Tyrian purple may have been discovered as early as during the Minoan civilization. Alexander the Great, when giving imperial audiences as the emperor of Macedonia; the emperor of the Seleucid Empire; and the kings of Ptolemaic Egypt all wore Tyrian purple. The imperial robes of Roman emperors were of Tyrian purple trimmed in metallic gold thread. The badge of office of a Roman Senator was a stripe of Tyrian purple on his white toga. Tyrian purple was continued in use by the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire until its final collapse in 1453. The tone of Tyrian purple displayed above is that tone of Tyrian purple which was the color of "clotted blood", which was considered the tone having the most prestige in ancient Greece and Rome, as recorded by Pliny the Elder. However, the actual tone varied depending on how the dye was formulated. Lesser royal houses that wanted to economize could mix Tyrian purple dye with the much less expensive indigo to create a color closer to violet. Han purple: Ancient China and Han blue were synthetic colors made by artisans in China during the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) or even earlier. Han purple is a type of artificial pigment found in China between 500 BC and AD 220. It was used in the decoration of the Terracotta Army. Royal purple: 17th century {{Infobox color The color royal purple is a tone of purple that is bluer than the ancient Tyrian purple. The first recorded use of royal purple as a color name in English was in 1661. In 1990, royal purple was formulated as one of the Crayola crayon colors. Mauveine: 1860s–1890s {{Infobox color Mauveine was first named in 1856. Chemist Sir William Henry Perkin, then eighteen, was attempting to create artificial quinine. An unexpected residue caught his eye, which turned out to be the first aniline dye—specifically, ''Perkin's mauve or mauveine is sometimes called aniline purple. Perkin was so successful in recommending his discovery to the dyestuffs industry that his biography by Simon Garfield is titled Mauve''. As mauveine faded easily, contemporary understanding of mauve is as a lighter, less saturated color than it was originally known. "Mauveine" was named after the mauve colored mallow flower, even though it is a much deeper tone of purple than mauve. The term "Mauve" in the late 19th century could refer to either the deep, rich color of the dye or the light color of the flower. Mauve (meaning Mauveine) came into great vogue when in 1862 Queen Victoria appeared at the Royal Exhibition in a mauve silk gown—dyed with mauveine. By 1890, this color had become so pervasive in fashion that author Thomas Beer used it in the title of his book about the 1890s, The Mauve Decade. Artists' pigment purple (red-violet): 1930s {{Infobox color In some parts of the world, 'Royal purple' (shown above) or the dark violet color known as generic purple is the common layman's idea of purple, but these color terms carry different meanings in different parts of the world. Even among modern native speakers of English there is confusion about the terms purple and violet. Using additive colors such as those on computer screens, it is possible to create a much brighter purple than with pigments where the mixing subtracts frequencies from the component primary colors. The equivalent color on a computer to the pigment color red-violet shown above would be this electric purple, i.e. the much brighter purple reproduced on the screen of a computer. This color is pure purple conceived as computer artists conceive it, as the color on the color wheel halfway between color wheel violet and electric magenta. Thus, electric purple is the purest and brightest purple that it is possible to display on a computer screen. Its RGB code is (191, 0, 255). An old name for this color, used by Robert Ridgway in his 1912 book on color nomenclature, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, is true purple. ==Web colors==