James ,
Found this ..might help !!!
THE NEW COLOURS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
“With regard to the colour of things there is no lengthy discussion, since sight itself demonstrates how much Beauty it adds to nature, when this last is adorned by many different colours”, as Hugh of Saint Victor wrote in the 12th century.
The Gonzaga velvet is named after the house founded in 1328. Lily has been a symbol of royalty since the Middle Ages
But what is such a widespread of tones due to? To the discovery of blue and of the colours made from it, which endowed medieval clothes with a myriad of colours. This isn’t, though, simply related to the beauty Hugh spoke of, but rather to their symbolism.
Each colour had its own meaning: this comes as no surprise, in an age when every little thing in the universe was perceived as part of God’s work of art, and when an allegorical meaning could always be glimpsed. Colours included.
THE MEANING OF CLOTHING COLOURS
Let’s start with the oldest colours:
white: a symbol of pureness, innocence and compassion;
black: the colour farmers had to wear, together with gray, as Charlemagne ordered, represented mourning and repentance, but since the 14th century it became one of the aristocracy’s favourite colours;
red: the colour of kings, given that it stood for fire, and thus for power, victory and shelter from illnesses and evil spirits
But in the 12th century other colours turned up:
blue: from clothing to painting, blue was used more and more often and replaced red as royal colour; it thus developed into the most widely used colour in the 14th and 15th century. An icon of faithfulness and spirituality, it was employed in the images of the Virgin Mary, too, as well as being used by the lower classes to dye their own clothes, since the required plant was very common. Though, of course, their blue was not as deep as the aristocrats’;
yellow: it has a negative nuance all over Europe, where traitors, Hebrews and Muslims are yellow-dressed; just to eventually evolve into a representation of the balance of red and white, though;
purple: the colour reserved for European royal families, but extremely rarely seen, due to the fact that the technique to produce it got lost just in the Late Middle Ages
You could also have a look at
www.historicenterprises.com
A company that specialise in medieval repro
Here's some pics of colours using dyes available
Nap
