The Color Purple ... and Green.

My absolute favourite colour combination is purple and green.  I'm not a sentimental person, but somehow my heart skips when I see these two colours together.  I don't know why.

I have no idea if there was something in my childhood that had these colours - a toy? clothing? something in the house?  Nothing comes to mind, but it makes you wonder where these likes and dislikes come from.  I've never been a real fan of blue and yellow, and I know my parents had ... actually still have ... a heavy glass vase from Venice made with those colors, that has been around since I was a small child.  Never liked it.  Actually, now I think of it, purple and yellow is another combination that makes me grimace.  It's not the yellow, it's the colour it's with.  Maybe I prefer my yellows to be anti-social!

Seeing the aubergines (eggplants) always reminds me of the wonderful farmers' markets that I've seen both locally and around the world.  The colours are so vibrant, you can almost feel the vitamins in the air!  Purple comes in all colours as well - the aubergines in the image above are heading slightly to the burgundy side of the spectrum, while the other photos show the purples nearer to blue.  There's also mauve and lilac which I guess are "official" colours themselves, but I'm still putting them under the heading of Purple.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the color as a deep, rich shade between crimson and violet.  Purple was the colour worn by Roman Emperors and magistrates and late by Catholic bishops.  Purple is often associated with royalty.  Looking on the Web, I found this information -

• Purple is the colour most often associated with the artificial and the unconventional.
• It is the major color that occurs the least frequently in nature.
• It was the first colour to be synthesized.
• Purple is the colour most associated with ambiguity.
• Like other colors made by combining two primary colours, it is seen as uncertain and equivocal.

Interesting.  I really enjoy researching for these posts, like the one I did on the colour blue.

The logo for the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon is purple and green but I can't think of too many others, if any.  It is a combination that you don't see very often in the design world.

My favourite image is still the first one on this post - dark, deep purple grapes hanging from vines covered in bright green leaves.  Ahh, there goes the little frisson (favourite new word) in my chest ...