You may or may not have noticed, depending on how much you use Google, that earlier this week Google marked an interesting textiles red-letter day, or should that be purple-letter day.
The folks at Google uploaded the above rather charming Google Doodle to celebrate the birthday of William Henry Perkin who was born on 12 March 1838. Perkin was the man who discovered the first synthetic dye, aniline purple.
There is an interesting short article describing his pioneering work deriving a purple dye from coal tar on the Selvedge Magazine Blog.
The discovery of aniline dyes and, in particular, a purple dye, provided the opportunity for the mass production of purple coloured cloth. Up until the 19th century there was a long-held convention of royalty exclusively wearing purple garments. A tradition that originated with the royal and aristocratic families of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Imperial family of the Roman Empire. In Renaissance England Elizabeth 1, a shrewd monarch with a fine instinct for understanding the value of visual propaganda, added to the many Sumptuary Laws governing how folk were permitted to dress, and proclaimed that only close members of the Royal family were allowed to wear purple.
Purple textiles had been incredibly expensive as they were coloured with Tyrian dye collected from sea snails with approximately 10,000 molluscs needed to produce about one gram of the dye.
Looking through my recent work I have hardly used any true purple (as seen in the third photograph above) and it is a dye that works well on silk producing an extremely rich colour.
Furthermore, I only have three scarves in my shop at the moment that have lilac(ish) backgrounds. Of course, I might be very tempted now to use a lot more purple as I have just read that the Colour of the Year for 2018 is Ultra Violet (perhaps why Google chose to celebrate Perkin?).
Maybe, I am at the turning point of a personal ‘colour cycle’ as some of my older pieces feature purple accents and one of my favourite chiffons from about 20 years ago shows a saint dressed in deep purple and burgundy. Perhaps it’s farewell to pastels and pinks for a while, mind you I am not holding my breath on that one!
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Agnes Ashe 
I was intrigued by the Google Doodle and followed it up, so this post of yours is extra- interesting. Your use of purple is certainly rich, sumptuous and special. I got scared off by a comment from someone recently – ‘purple is so ageing’. It actually doesn’t suit me, which is a shame, as it is a wonderful colour. And I don’t think anyone wearing one of your purples would be turned into an old lady at all.
Ha ha ageing and old ladies . . . that is soooo 20th century!! 😉 Grey is the new black isn’t it?
I am still reeling from the purple decor of the 1970s, but the top photo is a picture of my purple curtains just come out of storage and years in the attic, and going to be used again first time since 2004. Still not sure about wearing purple myself although I do like looking at it on others.
One of my favourite colours. I never got over the 70s purple and gold/yellow phase. The colours of passion and happiness in my thinking.