PURPLE COLORS. Painters in oil and water colors produce the different shades of purple by the admixture of red and blue. Dyers obtain this color from various sources, all of which are curious and interesting. From a very early period, purple has been one of the most highly prized of all colors, and came to be the symbol of imperial and royal power. Probably one great reason for this was the enormous cost of the only purple color known to the ancients, the Tyrian purple, which was obtained in minute quantities only from a Mediterranean species of molluscous animal or shell-fish, the Murex trun cates, and perhaps also Purpura lapillus. The chief seat of the industry from most ancient times was Tyre, where it continued to flourish in Im perial Roman times. Tarentum, the modern Otranto, was the seat of one of the great murex fisheries of the Romans, and there they had a number of large dyeing establishments. With the decline of the Roman Empire the employment of this purple color ceased, and it was not until a Florentine of the name of Orchillini discovered the dyeing properties of the lichen now called orchella weed that a simple purple color was known in Europe. The discovery was kept se
cret in Italy for nearly a century, and that country supplied the rest of Europe with the prepared (lye, which received the name of orchil or archil (q.v.). The color was very fugitive, and soon ceased to he used by itself; it, how ever, was found very useful in combination, and has a remarkable power of brightening up other colors. Many improvements have been lately made in arehil dyeing, especially in fixing it. Its value, however, has been greatly lessened by the discovery of the beautiful aeries of purples yielded by coal-tar as results of the combination of one of its products called aniline with other bodies. Consult : Dedeken, Rio. Beitray :lir Per perkende (Berlin, 1898) ; Faymonville, Dic Per purfarberei des klessischen Altortums (Heidel berg, 1900).