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Regency Blue - Diamine


visvamitra

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There's a scene in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice where the younger Bennett sisters are sharing some of the local gossip they've heard about their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley. At one point, Lydia lists as one of his virtues that he wears a blue coat, as if it's the greatest thing, ever.

 

To us, it's a strange thing for a blue coat to be a big deal, but, during the Regency era, the deeper the blue of something like a coat, the wealthier someone was. This is because indigo was difficult to grow and expensive to produce in the late 1700s. Depth of color came from repeated dye treatments; ergo, the deeper the blue something was, the more indigo had been used to make it, and thus the more expensive the final product.

 

This ink is the color of the blue coat that a wealthy Regency gentleman like Mr. Bingley would have worn--and that would have impressed a silly young Regency lady like Lydia.

 

So the ink is actually appropriately named.

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Aquaria, great story about the origin of this ink color’s name.

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There's a scene in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice where the younger Bennett sisters are sharing some of the local gossip they've heard about their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley. At one point, Lydia lists as one of his virtues that he wears a blue coat, as if it's the greatest thing, ever.

 

To us, it's a strange thing for a blue coat to be a big deal, but, during the Regency era, the deeper the blue of something like a coat, the wealthier someone was. This is because indigo was difficult to grow and expensive to produce in the late 1700s. Depth of color came from repeated dye treatments; ergo, the deeper the blue something was, the more indigo had been used to make it, and thus the more expensive the final product.

 

This ink is the color of the blue coat that a wealthy Regency gentleman like Mr. Bingley would have worn--and that would have impressed a silly young Regency lady like Lydia.

 

So the ink is actually appropriately named.

 

Well it's a thread resurrection, but Regency Blue is one of my favourites. :wub:

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There's a scene in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice where the younger Bennett sisters are sharing some of the local gossip they've heard about their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley. At one point, Lydia lists as one of his virtues that he wears a blue coat, as if it's the greatest thing, ever.

 

To us, it's a strange thing for a blue coat to be a big deal, but, during the Regency era, the deeper the blue of something like a coat, the wealthier someone was. This is because indigo was difficult to grow and expensive to produce in the late 1700s. Depth of color came from repeated dye treatments; ergo, the deeper the blue something was, the more indigo had been used to make it, and thus the more expensive the final product.

 

This ink is the color of the blue coat that a wealthy Regency gentleman like Mr. Bingley would have worn--and that would have impressed a silly young Regency lady like Lydia.

 

So the ink is actually appropriately named.

This is super interesting, thank you for writing this! I was always aware of purpur being super expensive, but didn't consider other colours. It makes loads of sense though, becaue I've known for ages (& it's generally well known) that poor people wore drab colours - most usually brown, because colours were so darn expensive and hard to obtain. Good that we don't have that problem anymore, eh? :)

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