mala_14 | Colours

Now this might just be me, but I find that when I'm thinking about my fabric stash or browsing the fabric store and I see something that I might want to use I have to stop and think whether or not it's a period colour/pattern etc. When it's something from my stash, I usually have to plop in front of the computer and browse through

demode_kvc's Real Women's Clothing Directory as well as marquise.de to see if I can find anything in that colour. Often this takes at least an hour (possibly because I get sidetracked by a lot of other pretties on these sites). So I thought to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be a great idea if you just had a list of all the colours, so you could just look and see if the colour was on the list?" And that's what I have done this weekend. Conveniently, I also had Kyoto's Revolution in Fashion at my house from the library, so I looked through all of that, and all the 1700s section of the Real Women's Clothing Directory, as well as Karen Augusta's Antique Lace and Fashion and Vintage Textile, and I now have what I think is a fairly comprehensive list of 18th century colours in women's clothing. And I thought the nice thing to do would be to share it with all you nice people out there in LJ-land, in case you ever want a quick reference on 18th century colours.

A couple of notes on this list:
1. This is just a list of colours, not patterns. Whether it's the predominant colour of a stripe or the background colour of a brocade, that's what I wrote down.
2. I did not use colours in portraits or fashion plates for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it took a really long time to compile what I do have. Also, colours in portraits can sometimes be off due to different monitors, etc. Plus, if it's a really old painting that hasn't been cleaned lately, the colour might also be off. Maybe one day I'll look through fashion plates and portraits though. Although I think most of the colours of portraits and such that I can think of right off the top of my head are on the list already.
3. I did not include colours in men's clothing that were not in women's clothing. Now I don't know if men and women wore the same colours, so I didn't want to put a colour on the list that I had seen a man's suit in, and then find out that women never wore that colour. Plus a lot of the fabrics I saw for women's clothing (the brocade patterns and most of the stripes) didn't appear to have been worn by men. But I'm not an expert, so I might be wrong. I was just playing it safe.
4. The colour names are all what I think the colours should be called. Sometimes I had a hard time thinking of just the right colour, and I've tried to be as specific as possible. That's why some of the colours have weird names. Most of the food named colours should be right on though. And some colours were really close together, but not exactly the same, but I thought they fit under the same catagory of colour name, so I didn't bother to make up a new colour name. The colours are also listed in sort of rainbow order, so if you are having a bit of trouble determining the shade based on the name, the colour above and below should give a bit of indication what colour it's supposed to be like.
5. I spell colour with a "u", because I'm from Canada, not because I can't spell. ;)

Dark red
Cherry red
Scarlet
Vermilion
Persimmon
Pumpkin
Marigold
Mustard
Golden yellow
Greyish yellow
Lemon
Creamy yellow
Avacado
Apple green
Olive
Sage
Pastel green
Emerald
Spruce
Teal
Aqua
Turquoise
Pale powder blue
Sky blue
Slate blue
Medium blue
Royal blue
Sapphire blue
Pale violet
Mauve (blue-red shot/cross-dye)
Eggplant
Plum
Bright pink
Coral
Salmon
Pinkish beige
Taupe
Cinnamon
Brown
Chocolate
Black
Pewter
Dove grey
Silver (cloth of silver)
White
Ivory
Cream
Deep gold