Blue has the shortest wavelengths of the colour spectrum making blues and violets the last colours to be seen, red is the first as it has the longest wave length. It is the world’s favourite colour. Blue is cool and calming for most cultures. Could be because of the way the brain absorbs the wavelengths, while red is agitating.
Language
Like all things, the meaning of blue has changed and developed over the centuries with events, innovations and understanding. There aren’t many things in nature that are blue for language to cling onto. A few minerals and gems, and some pigments in animals and plants. Though plants and fruits tend to be more violet. Blue as a word generally stems from green or black for this reason.
The ancient civilisations had their own interpretations. Ancient Egyptians had their own word for it. For Ancient Greeks, blue was variant of green. Blue is a recent addition to the colour chart, in 11th century it came to its own in English. English word comes from ‘bleu or blewe’ form old French. In Russian and Spanish, there is no single word but multiple words for light blue and dark blue, similar to our red and pink even though pink is light red. The Japanese have one word to describe blue and green, though this changed slightly when distinctive blue and green crayons arrived from abroad.
The word ‘denim’ comes from Levi’s. Levi Strauss was a German Jewish businessman who migrated to New York age 18, settled in san Francisco, where he sold the goods his brothers sent from New York including cotton cloth made in new Hampshire, de Nimes, named after town of Nimes in south France. De Nimes evolved into denim.
In 1923, the term ‘blue chip stock’ developed. A reporter who played poker spotted a stock ticker and noted several stocks trading quite high. At that time, poker players used blue red and white chips. The blue chips denoted the highest value for betting so high value stocks, he wrote about blue chip stocks.
‘Feeling blue’ apparently began in ships, when the captain or officer died during voyage, the ship would fly blue flags and hull had a blue line of paint across it.
The term ‘blue collar workers’ referred to the blue denim manual wage workers wore, which held more dirt than white.
Pigments of blue
7500 BCE – Lapis lazuli first mined in Afghanistan. Used for many years as paint, in jewellery and other decorative objects
5000 – 3000 BCE – pigment used in ancient times was woad, a soil-depleting flowering weed in Europe. Woad plant is part of cabbage family. Woad could produce dark and light blue and was the choice of dye for centuries in Europe. It’s a complicated process which included fermenting the woad, and the clothes that were dyed in it and came out yellow initially. They turned blue with the oxygen reaction in the air.
3000 BCE – Egyptian blue, first artificial pigment in Ancient Egypt, used in tomb painting and funeral objects
3000 BCE – Indigo, a pigment made from plants from the bean family. Cultivated in the Indus Valley. Was used in Mesopotamia and regions of Africa and Americas to dye clothes for thousands of years. Some of this would rub off on their skins, becoming known as the blue people.
14th 15th centuries CE – ultramarine pigment imported from mines in Afghanistan by Italian traders to Europe. Became the most expensive blue pigment used by painters in the renaissance
1709 – Pigment maker Johann Jacob discovered Prussian blue, before then blue made from lapis lazuli and ultramarine. Prussian blue is dried blood mixed with iron sulphides. Used by painters and then for wallpaper. The Japanese used pigment from dayflower but it faded; Prussian blue didn’t fade.
1744 – Indigo market of America was established when Eliza Lucas successfully cultivated the crop with the help of the slaves on her father’s land. She then shared the seeds and methods of cultivation, making the South Carolina indigo industry, exporting 500 tons of dye per year. American industry flourished for 40 odd years. When British lost their American colony, South Carolina farmers lost their market. Britain then revived India’s indigo market but with brutal labour force. This prompted riots in 1870 and inspired Ghandi’s first civil act in 1917, in support of the indigo workers in Bihar.
1799 – Louis Jacques Thénard made synthetic cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is cobalt with aluminium oxide mixed at 1200 degrees Celsius. Less intense than Prussian blue, and a stable pigment for ceramics jewellery and paint.
1826 – Synthetic version of ultramarine was made by Jean Baptiste Guimet.
1878, German chemists synthesised indigo.
Tones of blue
Turquoise is 70% blue and 30 percent green. The name is drawn from semi-precious gem rather than the other way around. Warm blues include sky blue, periwinkle, teal and turquoise. Cold blues include duck egg, navy, royal and midnight blue.
As with all colours, the lighter versions give the softer feelings of the colour and the darker versions have more energy and give the intense feelings associated with the colour. Light blue is mentally soothing and good for sleeping. Darker blue becomes more stimulating. Turquoise is uplifting, good to use in bathrooms to wake up, but creates unsettled sleep so not good for bedrooms.
General use in society
With regards to the genre of music, The Blues, it goes back to end of 19th century with the secular music of poor black people with lyrics telling of their woes. When this music emerged, the term ‘feeling blue’ was already strong in America so the new name for the music fit well.
With religion and institutions thereof, blue comes after green as the choice of colour for worship. Catholicism favours blue for Mary which was painted with ultramarine, the most expensive pigment. The Hindu god Lord Vishnu is associated with water. Rama is shown with blue skin and so is Shiva. Buddhists use turquoise blue prayer beads. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the Ten Commandments tablet was made of blue sapphire. Orthodox Jews have blue edged prayer shawls. In Islam, blue is an essential colour of nature for water and the sky. However blue eyes in uneasy in Islam. This uneasiness is found in other places too in central Asia. A blue eyed person is of dubious character.
Blue eyed people were deemed as ugly and not to be trusted. Blue eyes have low levels of melanin, they evolved long after African people migrated to colder climates. It’s proposed a single genetic mutation prompted the recessive trait, first in the north-western black sea region, less than 10,000 years ago, maybe before white skin even. Blue eyes are most prominent in Estonia, Finland, and Denmark. American blue eyes are declining. 8 percent of world population has blue eyes.
The term of ‘blue blood’ is given to anyone with aristocratic pretensions. Overlords in times of the Spanish inquisition were white and so the blue veins could be seen on their bodies, over their subjects who had darker skin.
In the late 1800s, Levi Strauss started his business in San Francisco selling goods. His best customer was Jacob Youphes, a Latvian Jewish immigrant. He settled into his profession as a tailor using the denim from Levi. In 1870, one of Davis’ customers asked for a pair of working trousers. He made in duck cloth, a type of linen canvas and turned out so well, he got more demand from the friends of the customer and switched to denim. Demand outstripped supply, he made a deal with his supplier Levi. They set up a patent, called it jeans, a word derived from the trousers worn by sailors in Genoa. Indigo was the cheapest available dye so they were blue. First sold as work clothes. During Second World War materials became scarce, like cotton for inner seams and copper for rivets. After the war jeans became a fashion item, a symbol of 1950s rock and roll rebellion. Hollywood helped to make them a staple. Synthetic dyes replace indigo. Today black jeans are common with other colours. Levi Strauss died in 1902.
Blue is common today for the corporate world in terms of clothing. Used in dark tones demonstrates a feeling of authority and expertise. In marketing and branding it is used a lot as well to promote the same attributes. The tech industry logos demonstrate this, like original Twitter, Linked In and Facebook.
We have explored here some common uses for blue, the way it feels psychologically, and some applications in society. It is one of those primary constant colours.
