My mother has informed me more than once that I’m overly interested in symbolism. It’s true. I’ve always liked symbols. It’s so interesting to see how different cultures regard the same same symbol, especially when it comes to colors.
I’ve been working in glass beads a lot lately, so the idea of color symbolism has been on my mind over the past few months. Most recently, I created necklaces and goblet tags as part of the prize support for the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. For those pieces, color wasn’t a terribly difficult decision. Of the four necklaces created, there is one in each of the house colors. For the three sets of goblet tags, each set had four tags. Each tag had a centerpiece bead or charm surrounded by one of the four house colors. As I sit here thinking about it, I realize that I may have created a very funny situation in one of the sets. I made a set of goblet tags that use charms with inspirational words in them. I worked hard to match each value to a house, instead of to the color.
This caused Gryffindor (red) to be “trust”, Hufflepuff (yellow) to be “believe”, Ravenclaw (blue) to be “inspire”, and Slytherin (green) to be “imagine”.
Colors do traditionally have a meaning attributed to them. In early cultures, the rarity and processing difficulty of the indigo plant made purple a color to be worn only by royalty. Red, typically understood to be a color of strength, was donned by the Roman Legions.
Traditionally, the basic colors are associated with the following meanings:
- Red- Strength, courage
- Orange- Cheerfulness, enemies
- Yellow- Creativity
- Green- Healing, nature
- Blue- Peacefulness, friendship
- Purple- Nobility, mystery
- White- Purity, innocence
- Brown- Earth, stability
- Black- Emptiness, death
Really kind of puts my charmed tags in perspective, and it’s a great thing to consider when trying to pick out jewelry for people. Color can be a very useful way to convey a message to the recipient.
