A World of Color

Yesterday, when my daughters and I were browsing through a shop, we came upon this necklace among others like it, with light blue or white or reddish-orange beads. I bought this one as a model. This summer, I'm hoping to sit under the white pine tree with my daughters and knot leather cord around colors of our choosing, to make more.

This afternoon I made these earrings to match--a Sunday pair, to wear at home. I made some others, too, for a more public wearing on another day.

As I was thining about how to describe the bead colors, I happened upon the wikepedia page List of Colors which provides and alphabetical list of color names from Air Force Blue to Zinnwaldite Brown. I glanced through, looking at names for red-orange. Awesome, Folly, International Orange, Tangelo, Vermillion. Then names for light blue: Verdigris, Spiro Disco Blue, Robin-egg Blue. I was smiling when I discovered that my beads matched Light Blue and Orange-Red best. But my smile widened when I read this introductory disclaimer:

 Color naming is fuzzy and arbitrary, and varies among people and cultures, with no single swatch adequately representing any particular color name. Computer displays have a somewhat limited gamut, so many colorful pigments cannot be represented on a screen at all and computer simulation of the natural world is, at best, a rough approximation. (Wikepedia, List of colors)