Room 47

47.1
The word ‘khaki’ is Urdu for ‘dust-coloured’. Since the nineteenth century, khaki fabric has been widely used by soldiers as camouflage. This practice originated in Pakistan, where white fabrics were rubbed with mud to achieve a camouflage colour.

The word ‘beige’ comes from French and originally denoted a fabric woven from undyed and unbleached sheep’s wool. The word was also eventually adopted for this fabric’s colour. 

In the early twentieth century, when it became fashionable to drive in open cars, many driving jackets were made from beige or khaki fabrics, which did not show up the dust.   


47.2
Brown pigments are among the oldest in the world and were made from mud and minerals. Mummy brown was traditionally made from ‘mummia’, a mixture that contained the ground-up remains of ancient Egyptian mummies, supplied by apothecaries. Although unimaginable today, this practice continued until the 1960s. By this time, the supply of mummies had dried up.

Legend has it that when the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) learned the origins of mummy brown, he respectfully buried his tube of the paint in his garden to give it ‘a decent burial’.

 

47.3
Ancient Teutonic and Celtic warriors used colour to intimidate the enemy in battle. They painted their bodies with woad, a blue vegetable dye. This led the Romans to view blue as a ‘barbaric’ colour, which they therefore preferred to avoid.

Indigo blue became the most popular dye in Europe following its introduction from America in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, it was used to dye denim for jeans, which originated as sturdy workman’s clothing. 

The global dominance of jeans as a fashion staple has ensured that indigo is still one of the most widely used dyes worldwide.