Violet, purple, lavender and memories

A gentle colour, violet (or purple) makes me think of my grand-mother, a delightfully gentle and contented lady whom I loved dearly. She was born in 1880 and was traditionally and firmly Victorian in her approach to clothes and most aspects of life. Widowed in her early sixties, she wore purple often when I knew her, along with black and grey. She always used the lovely lavender-smelling 4711 eau de Cologne, a perfume first produced at the beginning of the 20th century but now very much out of fashion.

So purple, violet and lavender are for me colours that are heavy with meaning.

Most of the flowers in my garden are now past and I've been busy with family visitors, preventing quiet forays out with my camera, so I've sought refuge in the archives this time. I seem to have had no problems at all finding photos so perhaps sub-consciously I take lots of photos of violet or purple or lavender.

Here is a sample of my findings ...

Heady thistles photographed in an Essex garden.

A friend's collection of water-worn stones.

A richly patterned and stitched textile photographed in the chapel at Lydiard House near Swindon in Wiltshire.

Wonderful marble facings to the walls of St Mark's Basilica in Venice.

A  fine filigree of rusting metal seen at a water mill in Northern Italy - a cheat this time as it was colour-adjusted in Photoshop. When I had played with it, it reminded me of the lace my grand mother used to wear so often in the neck of a dress so it seemed right to post it here.

And last of all, a fortunate trick of the light turned to violet this panel of corrugated iron with its peeling paint.





















And now, because we've reached the end of the rainbow, an extraordinary picture taken on a canal in Burano, Italy, shown here because it includes the whole amazing spectrum of colour in one photo.

If you're a new visitor to my blog, further details of this colour fun are to be found on Julie's blog and some previous colour posts here, here  or here... explore!