Scarlet
- HEX
- #FF2400
- RGB
- 255 36 0
- HSL
- 8° 100% 50%
- CMYK
- 0 86 100 0
Scarlet or Crimson?
A bright red leaning orange. Crimson leans the other way, toward blue.
Language
Scarlet was a fabric before it was a color. In medieval England the word meant a costly, finely finished wool cloth, and because the best of it was dyed brilliant red, the name slid from the cloth to its color. It came through French and Medieval Latin; the deeper origin is uncertain, perhaps Arabic siqillat, a fine silk.
History
The dye made the difference. Kermes insects from Mediterranean oaks gave the finest medieval scarlet, until American cochineal took over. In the British army, ordinary soldiers wore red coats dyed with cheap madder, while officers paid for scarlet dyed with cochineal.
Poetry
In the Book of Revelation the great harlot is dressed in purple and scarlet. In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hester Prynne must wear a red letter A for adultery. Scarlet became the color of sin worn in public.
Culture
Scarlet was the luxury cloth of the Middle Ages. In Henry VI's England a single yard of even the cheapest scarlet cost a master mason more than a month's wages. Florentine dyers' manuals ranked it the highest of all colors, and sumptuary laws across Europe kept it for the few. In the 1460s, when Byzantine purple ran out, cardinals moved into scarlet too.
Science
Tin made scarlet blaze. Around 1607 the Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel found that a tin mordant turned cochineal from a dark crimson-purple into a flame scarlet, and tin recipes soon ran from deep cherry to near neon. The tale that he found it by spilling acid onto a pewter windowsill is probably a legend.
Kin
- Crimson: Both were kermes reds; crimson's name means 'made by worms'
- Carmine: Cochineal carmine dyed British officers' scarlet coats
- Purple: Revelation pairs them: the two luxury dyes of the ancient world
- Vermilion: Mineral red against insect red, rivals for centuries
Sources
- Etymonline, 'scarlet'
- Wikipedia, 'Scarlet (color)'; 'Cochineal'
- Revelation 17:4; Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)
- Greenfield, A Perfect Red (2005)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Gage, Colour and Culture (1993)
- Pastoureau, Red: The History of a Color (2017)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.