Bringing colour to life: Blue

Feeling blue, blue Monday, dolly blue, blue suede shoes, Mediterranean blue, once upon a blue moon, Rhapsody in blue, Blue Valentine, blue yonder, listening to the blues, blue cheese, blue blood, sporting blue, Bluetooth, Picassos' blue period, blue light, blue airmail, blue beard, Blue Planet ...

Blue is the colour of the oceans,

 the sky

and many a swimming pool.

An essential colour of nature, blue is probably the world's favourite colour. Cooling and calming, who doesn't feel that little more relaxed at the sight of a clear blue sky and a view of the sea?

But it's not been an easy history for the colour blue - often undervalued and passed over for greatness,  the ancient Greeks and Romans preferring black, white and red and often associated with barbarism - think of the early Celts smearing their faces and body with woad before going into battle. Only the Egyptians seemed to value the colour blue, where it was thought to dispel evil and bring prosperity.  

In the 12th Century, due to the influence of the church, many colours, including blue became to be seen as divine.  It was around this time that the Virgin Mary was first depicted wearing blue robes and the colour began to be seen as a symbol of beauty, purity and wisdom and  seen as a very feminine colour.

The Chinese used to depend on Persia for the blue for their Ming porcelain and I always regard it a lucky day when I dig up a blue and white china fragment on my allotment!   

Blue is an easy colour to wear, the work-a-day blue jeans developed by Levi for the manual labourer are today's default 'off-duty' wear. All shades of blue are often used for uniforms from schools to the military, not forgetting 'the boys in blue'. It was synthesising indigo dye in 1860s that helped German chemist, Adolf von Baeyer win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1905.  A direct consequence of this was the catastrophic effect on the Indian economy and a decline in  the demand for natural indigo, whilst the German chemical dye industry expanded and the profits undoubtedly help fund the German war effort.

There's a lot of blue out there in the world and

when you tilt your head and look at the night sky it's ever deepening shades of blue that you see

but I'm left wondering, could this actually be sky blue pink, shot with a carrot?

Hazel & Terry