Abecedary to color: F

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Last week we talked about how the colors you choose can suggest a specific place; we aren’t done with that idea and will come back to it again and again.   

But color is not just about where, it’s also about when.  Some color combinations have become strongly identified with certain decades or centuries.  You can play around with them.  

The last F on this page comes from Art Nouveau, which dominated the 30 years that peaked in the 1890’s, which was actually known as the “Mauve Decade.”* Around the turn of the century, the most popular colors were lilac, ochre, olive, brown, dark red, and of course, mauve. 

I've colored this sample F in a mix of these desaturated, languid, and slightly off colors.    

* A few years later, historian Lewis Mumford coined the nickname “The Brown Decades” to describe the 30 years leading up to the Mauve Decade, from the end of the Civil War to mid 1890.