Mauve
- HEX
- #A8778F
- RGB
- 168 119 143
- HSL
- 331° 22% 56%
- CMYK
- 0 29 15 34
Mauve or Lilac?
A dusty pink-purple, darker and pinker than lilac.
History
In 1856, eighteen-year-old William Perkin tried to make quinine from coal-tar chemicals and got a black sludge. Cleaning the flask with alcohol, he saw purple. He patented the dye, opened a factory the next year, and in 1859 it was renamed mauve, French for the mallow flower. See mauveine.
Culture
The craze came before the chemistry. Paris was wild for mauve in 1857, dyed with natural purples from lichens and from murexide, made from bird guano. Perkin's factory reached full production only at the end of that year, so his dye rode the wave rather than starting it. By 1859 Punch joked about 'the Mauve Measles', and within a few years newer aniline colors had pushed mauve aside.
Language
Victorians said it 'morve'. Perkin first sold his dye as Tyrian purple, borrowing the glamour of the ancient snail dye, and buyers also called it aniline purple or Perkin's purple. By 1859 it was mauve, the French name for the mallow, because Paris set the fashion and French dyers had already made the word chic.
Science
Mauve came out of coal, a little at a time. About 100 pounds of coal gave a quarter of an ounce of the dye. But that dye was strong: a drop could color pounds of cotton, and it held up to washing and light far better than the lilac dyes it replaced.
Symbolism
Mauve also became a color of grief. Victorian mourning ran in stages: after the first months in black, the bereaved could move into grey or mauve for half-mourning, a sign they were returning to ordinary life. See mourning-colors.
Kin
- Malachite: Both named after the mallow: its flower and its leaf
- Magenta: The next aniline dye, named for a battle in 1859
- Purple: Perkin's dye ended purple's long career as a luxury
- Lilac: Aniline dyes take their name from indigo's anil, lilac's cousin
In paintings
- Houses of Parliament, Sunset, Claude Monet
- The Kiss, Gustav Klimt
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Mauveine' (1856; Greenford works 1857; renamed 1859; Punch)
- Garfield, Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (2000)
- Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)
- Greenfield, A Perfect Red (2005)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (2002)
- Finlay, Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World (2021)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.