It was due to this reason that not even the rich of the richest nations afforded to have purple on their flag.īut about one and a half centuries ago, in 1856, a 18 year old English chemist, William Henry Perkin accidentally created synthetic purple compound while attempting to synthesize Quanine, an anti-malaria drug! When he got to know that this compound can be used to dye fabrics, he patented the dye, manufactured it and got goddamn rich! Thereafter purple dye was mass produced such that everyone can afford it. 1 kg of Tyrian purple costs as much as 3 kg of gold today. In fact, 3rd century Roman emperor Aurelian didn’t allow his wife to buy a shawl made from Tyrian purple silk as it cost 3 times its weight in gold. In some cases, dye was expensive for royal family members. Those who wore this colour were thought God or the descendants of God. Due to this cost, this colour was only used by royal classes of Rome, Egypt and Persia. Since extracting 1 gram of Tyrian purple dye required 10000 snails, the cost rose tremendously.
This dye was obtained from a snail that was found in that area of Mediterranean. The dye required to make purple came from Phoenician city, Tyre. For this to know, you need to know from where Purple came from. In fact Queen Elizabeth I forbade people other than royal family members to wear it.īut it is true. Purple has been associated with royalty, power and wealth for centuries.
Well Purple was way too expensive! In fact, purple was way more expensive than gold. Purple has never been used to represent Kingdom, civilization or empire. There are about 196 countries in the world today and virtually none of them have Purple colour on their national flag.
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