Purple; anal glands to royalty

Introduction

There are thirteen colours that have become significant throughout my life. Some are tied to particular people or places and have gradually found their way into my artwork. This series of Colour Essays is my way of exploring those colours a little more closely, combining personal experience with the history, science and stories behind them. Each month I will select another colour, from my list, and discover more about it than I ever imagined.

Purple has never been one of the defining colours of my life, yet it has appeared often enough that I eventually stopped to ask why.

• 

• 

• 

• 

My earliest school age memories of purple are from Muntadgin Primary School, a small school (now gone) in Western Australia's Wheatbelt. My sports uniform consisted of a purple T-shirt with white shorts, that rarely stayed white for long (see below)65. Who thought that white shorts was a sensible idea at an outback school with so much dust and dirt? Purple surfaced throughout the years as tights when I was a toddler, a knitted sweater, Doc Martens in my forties and brightly coloured hair. Among the limited childhood photographs is one of me sitting in the back of a Holden panel van with my baby sister, wearing a distinctly 1970s purple shower cap (see below).

The colour purple also connects different places in my life. Both of my parents were born in Fremantle—my mother in South Fremantle and my father in East Fremantle—so supporting the Fremantle Dockers has always felt more like family tradition than an interest in football. Since moving to Melbourne, purple has found another sporting connection through the Melbourne Storm, where scarves, beanies and hoodies have become part of game day.

Another big connection to Purple would be Prince, one of my favourite artists and very influential in my teens. Purple Rain, to this day, is still one of my favourite songs and is always best played loud. Go on, follow the link and have a listen.

Album cover from Personal collection.

Like many people, I had always associated purple with royalty and luxury, but I'd never really thought about why. Once I started reading, I realised that history tells a much richer story.

History

For thousands of years, the most highly prized purple in the world was Tyrian Purple, named after the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre in present-day Lebanon. Unlike dyes extracted from plants, Tyrian Purple was produced from the odorous secretions of an anal mucous gland from sea snail called Murex. The colour was discovered when Hercules’s dog chewed on the snails and turned his mouth purple. Hercules told King Phoenix about the discovery and the monarch made the decision the Phoenician rulers would wear this colour to symbolise their status (Perryman 2021).

A small wood panel painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Melqart (Hercules) and his dog discovering the murex hue c. 1636. The sea snail is erroneously depicted as a conical nautilus shell instead a prickly and pointy murex one. https://www.thecollector.com/what-is-tyrian-purple/

Estimates suggest that around 10,000 snails were needed to produce a single gram of dye, making Tyrian Purple one of the most valuable materials of the ancient world. Its worth reflected the labour involved as much as the rarity of the finished product. Every snail had to be collected, the tiny gland containing the dye carefully removed, and the liquid processed under tightly controlled conditions before the colour finally developed (Gorvett 2023).

The work to extract the dye was anything but glamorous. Ancient writers described an overwhelming smell created during the production of the dye, and archaeological excavations at Tyre have uncovered enormous mounds of discarded shells, evidence of an industry that operated on an astonishing scale (Gorvett 2023). It's a reminder that many of history's greatest luxuries began as hard, messy work carried out far from the palaces where the finished product would eventually be worn.

One of the most surprising discoveries I came across was that, despite Tyrian Purple being one of the most famous dyes in history, the exact method for producing it was lost for centuries. Ancient texts described the colour but not the process, leaving archaeologists, chemists and historians to piece together the technique from fragments of evidence and archaeological sites (Larbi 2020).

In 2007, Tunisian researcher Mohamed Ghassen Nouira began experimenting after finding a murex shell on a local beach. Working through years of trial and error, he eventually rediscovered a method for producing Tyrian Purple from the sea snail's tiny dye gland. Today, only a handful of people around the world are known to produce the dye using traditional methods, each closely guarding their own techniques. It is remarkable that a colour once worn by emperors can still retain an element of mystery more than two thousand years later (Larbi 2020).

Mohamed Ghassen Nouira with his assortment of shells and dyes. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-passion-purple-revives-ancient-dye.html

As trade expanded across the Mediterranean, Tyrian Purple became closely associated with wealth and political power. The Romans named the colour sacer murex (sacred purple) and laws were introduced restricting who could wear particular shades (Perryman 2021, Schultz 2013). Owning purple cloth wasn't simply a display of wealth; it was a visible statement of status.

Although purple is still linked with royalty today, I hadn't appreciated that the association began because the dye itself was so difficult to produce. The colour's reputation was built long before synthetic dyes existed, and for centuries its value lay in the extraordinary effort required to make it.

Purple association to royalty throughout the past. https://www.thecollector.com/what-is-tyrian-purple/

An Accidental Discovery

By the middle of the nineteenth century, purple was still expensive and largely inaccessible. That changed in 1856 through an unexpected discovery by an eighteen-year-old chemistry student named William Henry Perkin (Science History Institute n.d.).

Photo of Perkins and colleagues at Perkins & Sons. https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mauve-mania/

Perkin had been trying to synthesise quinine, an important treatment for malaria, when one of his experiments produced a dark residue instead of the result he had hoped for. Rather than discarding it, he dissolved the residue in alcohol and noticed that it created a brilliant purple dye. Recognising its potential, he patented the discovery and named it mauveine (Science Museum 2023; Marshall 2022).

The invention of mauveine made purple available to far more people than ever before, but its impact extended well beyond fashion. It demonstrated that synthetic organic chemistry could produce commercially valuable products, helping to establish the modern dye industry and encouraging further research that influenced everything from pharmaceuticals to photographic chemicals (Science Museum 2019).

Purple Becomes Fashionable

William Perkin's discovery of mauveine transformed far more than chemistry. Until then, purple had remained expensive and largely inaccessible, but synthetic dyes suddenly made vibrant shades affordable to a much wider audience. Within only a few years, fashion had embraced the change.

Portrait of Empress Catherine II of Russia, Fyodor Rokotov after Roslin 1780s, Hermitage. https://thedreamstress.com/2021/06/18th-century-purple/

The excitement surrounding the new colour became known as "mauve mania." Following Perkin's discovery in 1856, mauve appeared in dresses, ribbons, gloves, hats and accessories across Britain and Europe. Queen Victoria helped establish the trend when she wore a mauve silk gown to the Royal International Exhibition in London in 1862, while Empress Eugénie of France, whose favourite colour was said to be violet, further popularised the fashionable new shades throughout Europe (Marshall 2022; Perryman 2021).

This shawl, dyed with Perkin’s mauve dye, was exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mauve-mania/

As synthetic dyes became more sophisticated, the range of purples expanded. One of the most fashionable was heliotrope, a soft bluish-purple named after the flowering plant. By the 1880s, heliotrope regularly appeared in fashion magazines, department stores and home furnishings, becoming one of the defining colours of the late Victorian period (Zwolan 2025).

Violet also gained popularity during this time, particularly after the introduction of new synthetic pigments that offered artists and manufacturers colours with greater stability and intensity. For the first time, people could choose from a range of purples that had previously been impossible or prohibitively expensive to produce. Colour had become something that chemistry could invent as much as nature could provide.

Reading about this period made me realise how closely fashion and science are connected. I had always thought of fashion trends as being driven by designers or changing tastes, but the popularity of purple was also shaped by scientific discovery. A laboratory experiment had transformed not only the clothes people wore, but also the colours available to artists, designers and manufacturers.

Purple in Art

Fashion was not the only area transformed by the arrival of synthetic purple dyes and pigments. Artists also embraced the expanding palette, gaining access to colours that were brighter, more stable and more affordable than many of the purples available previously. Pigments such as cobalt violet and manganese violet allowed artists to explore subtle variations of colour without relying solely on mixtures of reds and blues (FitzHugh & Zycherman 1992).

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, 1903. Oil on canvas, 65.7 × 101 cm. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20701/waterloo-bridge-sunlight-effect

The Impressionists were among the first to fully embrace these new colours. Rather than treating shadows as black or grey, artists such as Claude Monet introduced violets and blues to capture the changing effects of light and atmosphere. Monet famously remarked, "I have finally discovered the true colour of the atmosphere. It is violet. Fresh air is violet. Three years from now, everyone will work in violet." Whether slightly embellished over time or not, the quote perfectly reflects the Impressionists' fascination with violet and their willingness to challenge traditional approaches to colour.

Pierre Auguste Renoir, The Swing (La balaçoire), 1876. Oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/la-balancoire-1096

Not everyone appreciated this new way of painting. Critics even accused the Impressionists of suffering from "violetomania" because of their frequent use of violet in skies, shadows and reflections. Today, those same paintings are celebrated for the way they captured light, but at the time their colour choices were considered radical.

Since reading about violet pigments, I have found myself looking much more carefully at Impressionist paintings. Violet appears not only in flowers but throughout the atmosphere, water and shadows. Once I noticed it, it became difficult not to see it everywhere.

Science

William Perkin's discovery made purple far more accessible, but one of the biggest surprises came when I started reading about the science of the colour itself.

I assumed purple was simply another colour in the visible spectrum until I researched it and discovered it doesn't exist in quite the same way as red, green or blue. Violet appears in the spectrum because it has its own wavelength of light, but purple is something our brains create by combining information from the red and blue ends of the spectrum (Zeki 1999).

I found that fascinating because it challenged something I had always taken for granted. Purple feels as real as any other colour we experience, yet it only exists because of the way our brains interpret light, just like Pink.

The more I read, the more I realised that purple continues to blur the line between appearance and reality. Many of the brilliant purples seen in nature aren't created by purple pigments at all. Instead, microscopic structures interact with light, scattering different wavelengths to produce colours that shimmer and change depending on the viewing angle. This phenomenon, known as structural colour, can be seen in the feathers of some birds, the wings of butterflies and the petals of certain flowers (Vukusic & Sambles 2003).

Purple Emporer Butterfly. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/invertebrates/butterflies/purple-emperor

Another discovery I enjoyed was learning that bees experience purple very differently from us. Their vision extends into the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, allowing them to see patterns on flowers that remain completely invisible to human eyes. These markings act as guides, directing bees towards nectar and helping with pollination (Lunau et al. 2025).

Did You Know?

• Tyrian Purple was so valuable that it was sometimes worth more than gold by weight (University of Chicago Library 2020).

• Around 10,000 sea snails were needed to produce just one gram of Tyrian Purple dye (Gorvett 2023).

• The dye wasn't purple when it was first extracted. It only developed its colour after exposure to sunlight and oxygen (University of Chicago Library 2020).

• William Perkin discovered the first synthetic purple dye while trying to develop a treatment for malaria (Science Museum n.d.).

• Purple is not a spectral colour. Our brains create it by combining red and blue light (Zeki 1999).

• The earliest evidence of violet dates back 25000 years when Neanderthals made the discovery after grinding manganese. This process is still used by the Hopi Native Americans of Arizona to dye ritualistic objects (Perryman 2021).

Conclusion

Before researching purple, I thought of it simply as one of the thirteen colours that had quietly appeared throughout my life. I hadn't expected it to have such a remarkable history.

What began as a colour I associated with royalty turned out to be a story of chemistry, science, trade and innovation. It reminded me that even the colours we see every day have histories that are often far more complex than we expect.

That has become one of the unexpected pleasures of writing these Colour Essays. Each colour begins with familiar memories, but the research invariably leads somewhere I never anticipated.

Sources and Further Reading

Australian Academy of Science. 2021. How Bees See Flowers. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science. Accessed 27 July 2026. https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/how-bees-see.

FitzHugh, Elisabeth West, and Lois A. Zycherman, eds. 1992. Artists' Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Volume 2. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

Gorvett, Zaria. 2023. " Tyrian purple: The lost ancient pigment that was more valuable than gold". BBC Future, 30 August 2023. Accessed 27 July 2026. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231122-tyrian-purple-the-lost-ancient-pigment-that-was-more-valuable-than-gold.

History.com Editors. 2024. "Why Is Purple Considered the Color of Royalty?" History. Accessed 3 August 2026. https://www.history.com/articles/why-is-purple-considered-the-color-of-royalty.

Larbi, Kaouther. 2020. "Passion for Purple Revives Ancient Dye in Tunisia." Phys.org, July 26, 2020.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-passion-purple-revives-ancient-dye.html. Accessed Aug 4, 2026. 

Lunau, K., M. G. G. Camargo, and Z.-X. Ren. 2025. "Bees, Flowers and UV." Plant Biology 27 (6): 948–961. https://doi.org/10.1111/plb.70050.

Marshall, Katherine. 2022. "Perkin's Purple." Royal Society Blog, May 9, 2022. https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/05/perkins-purple/

Perryman, Laura. 2021. The Colour Bible: The Definitive Guide to Colour in Art and Design, Octopus Publishing Group, London.

Schultz, Colin. 2013. "In Ancient Rome, Purple Dye Was Made from Snails." Smithsonian Magazine, October 10, 2013. Accessed 27 July 2026. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/in-ancient-rome-purple-dye-was-made-from-snails-1239931/.

Science History Institute. n.d. William Henry Perkin. Scientific Biographies. Accessed 27 July 2026. https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/william-henry-perkin/.

Science Museum. 2019. "The Colourful Chemistry of Artificial Dyes." Science Museum. Accessed 27 July 2026. https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/chemistry/colourful-chemistry-artificial-dyes.

Vukusic, Peter, and J. Roy Sambles. 2003. "Photonic Structures in Biology." Nature 424 (6950): 852–855. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01941.

Zeki, Semir. 1999. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zwolan, Madeleine. 2025. “1880”. Fashion History Timeline. Accessed 3 Aug, 2026. https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1880-2/