Room 44

44.1
In clothing, orange is a high-visibility colour, used for safety vests on construction sites and uniforms in American prisons. Perhaps the most famous orange clothes are the robes worn by Buddhist monks. The Buddha decreed that these could be dyed only with plant extracts, such as costly saffron or the cheaper turmeric.

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. As a dye, saffron imparts an intense orange colour to clothes. In the Middle Ages, orange was considered an ungodly colour because it was a mix or red and ‘evil’ yellow. Judas, the betrayer of Christ, was always depicted with ginger hair.

Orange is a warning colour on roads and motorways, and the infamous ‘black box’ on airplanes is actually hi-vis orange.

Oranje is een bekende alarmkleur in het verkeer, en de beruchte ‘zwarte doos’ in vliegtuigen is in werkelijkheid dan ook oranje.


44.2
Because the Dutch monarchy belongs to the House of Orange-Nassau, the Dutch flag was originally orange, white and blue. However, because it proved impossible to create an orange dye that was not bleached by the sun, it was decided in the 1660s to replace the orange band with red.

Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, but there were times when wearing this colour could be dangerous: for example, wearing an  orange Resistance badge during the Nazi occupation (1940-45), or an orange cockade (rosette) during the French occupation.

44.3
For much of history, orange was not seen as an independent colour. Many shades of orange were classified as yellow or red. Orange acquired its own identity when Isaac Newton described the colour spectrum in 1666 and divided it into the seven colours of the rainbow.

The word ‘orange’ has been used to describe the colour in English only since the sixteenth century. Before that, the word ‘giolureade’ (yellow-red) was used in Northern Europe.