 |  | | | Purple | 28 March 2005 | | |
The history of a colour
In ancient Rome, the colour purple meant power and everyone wanted to wear it. The craze was so intense that Pliny wrote: "we must pardon the mad desire for purple, but why the high prices for a dye with an offensive smell and a hue which is dull and greenish, like an angry sea?"
Victoria Finlay is the author of Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox and she took Jennifer Chevalier to the British Museum to find out about the long history of Tyrian Purple.
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