Does a color have a price?

Short answer

Yes, and sometimes for more than gold. What makes a color expensive isn't the light itself, but how hard it is to find and how much labor it takes to produce the substance that carries it onto fabric or a wall. For centuries, an expensive color became a sign of who someone was; once it got cheap, that sign wore away too.

Price born from scarcity

The basic rule of color economics is simple: a color's price rises with the scarcity of the substance that provides it. Earth red or charcoal black can be found almost everywhere and are cheap. A bright, durable, fade-resistant blue, purple, or red, though, has throughout history often come from a single source, a distant place, and a long labor process. The scarcity of the source, the length of the trade route, and the difficulty of the process all add to the price.

This lesson's three examples come from three very different sources: a stone from a mountain, a sea snail, and an insect that lives on a cactus. All three were, at one point, among the most valuable colors in world trade. In this sense, each was a color commodity: a good that was weighed, shipped, taxed, and priced in the market. The economic analysis of color — monopoly, regulation, and market structure — is the work of the lessons in the EC track; our purpose here is to see how price changed the meaning of color.

Stone into blue: ultramarine

Ultramarine's source is lapis lazuli, mined from mountains in what is now the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan. The stone traveled first to Mediterranean ports, then to Europe's workshops; its name means "from beyond the sea." Turning the stone into pigment was laborious: it was ground, washed, and its blue grains separated from the other minerals. The best quality could be considered worth more than gold by weight.

You can see the result of this price on the canvas: painters reserved ultramarine for a painting's most important figure, often the Virgin Mary's cloak. Ultramarine's journey and its symbolic place in art are told in detail in TK-04. The end of the story is economic too: in 1824, an institution in France offered a prize for a method to produce ultramarine cheaply, and in 1828, Jean-Baptiste Guimet won it. Synthetic ultramarine turned a blue once measured out by contract into an ordinary paint.

Sea into purple: Tyrian purple

Certain sea snails of the Mediterranean carry a substance in their glands that turns purple on contact with air. Dyeing a single garment required a large number of snails, and the dye-works were notorious for their smell. The result was a purple that became the color of power in Rome and Byzantium. The details of its production, and the laws that governed who was allowed to wear it, are the subject of TK-03.

The link between purple's price and its meaning is at its clearest here. If only the very rich can afford a color, wearing that color displays wealth itself. After a while, who may wear that color becomes limited by law too, and so an expensive good turns into a rank.

Insect into red: cochineal

A small insect that lives on cactuses in Mexico and Central America yields an intense red when dried and crushed. Known in the Aztec and Maya world, this dye was carried to Europe after the Spanish arrived in the Americas and quickly became the continent's most valuable red. Why Europe couldn't work out the source of this red for a long time is told in TK-05.

Cochineal's life today is interesting too: carmine, extracted from the same insect, is still used in food under the code E120 and in cosmetics, especially in lipstick and blush. Which shades get produced in a cosmetic product is also a sign of whose skin the product was made for; this issue is covered in MT-08, and food dyes in MA-12.

Example — same product, different color, different price

The pricing of color didn't stay in the past. Today, some paint options on a car are offered for an extra charge, and some colors of a phone are produced in limited numbers and sold at a higher price. The product is the same, and the cost difference is often small; but color is priced as a tool for differentiation. The economic logic of this strategy is examined in EC-10.

The difference is this: in ancient times, a color's price came from scarcity; today, scarcity is often designed. A color produced in limited numbers reproduces, on a small scale, the "not everyone can have this" message that Tyrian purple once carried.

Common misconception

Summary

1. A color's price is determined by the scarcity of the substance that carries it and the labor of producing it; ultramarine, Tyrian purple, and cochineal are three examples of this.
2. An expensive color can turn into a status symbol that displays its owner's wealth, and over time into a rank protected by law.
3. When a color becomes cheap, this sign wears away; today, scarcity is often redesigned through limited color editions.

Test yourself

1. (Easy) What stone is ultramarine made from?
2. (Easy) What creature is cochineal dye made from?
3. (Medium) How does a color being expensive affect its social meaning?
4. (Medium) What development in 1828 was going to lower the price of ultramarine?
5. (Hard) What does the price set for purple silk in Diocletian's edict say about the meaning of purple in Rome?
6. (Hard) What similarity and what difference are there between a phone's limited-edition color and Tyrian purple?

Answers

1. From lapis lazuli; its most important source is the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan ("Stone into blue").
2. From a small insect that lives on cactuses; producing one pound of dye requires roughly 70,000 dried insects ("Insect into red").
3. When only a certain group can afford a color, wearing it displays wealth and standing; the color turns into a status symbol, sometimes into a rank protected by law. When the color becomes cheap, this meaning wears away ("Sea into purple").
4. Guimet's method for synthetic ultramarine; it won the prize offered by a French institution ("Stone into blue").
5. Being given the highest price shows that purple wasn't an ordinary good but a sign belonging to power; the price is a measure of who the color was considered to belong to ("Sea into purple").
6. Similarity: both carry a "not everyone can have this" message. Difference: Tyrian purple's scarcity came from nature and labor, while the scarcity of a limited-edition color is designed by the manufacturer's decision ("Example — same product, different color, different price").

Sources

• National Gallery, London, "Colour Stories: Blue" (podcast).
• WebExhibits, "Pigments through the Ages: Ultramarine"; MFA Boston, CAMEO, "Ultramarine blue, synthetic."
• Diocletian, Edict on Maximum Prices, 301 CE; English translation: University of Bergen, kark.uib.no.
• Science History Institute, "Red the World Over."
• HistoricalMX, "Cochineal: Red Dye for the World."

Next step

EC-01 builds the economics of this lesson: it analyzes the production monopoly in Tyrian purple, the Spanish monopoly and smuggling in cochineal, and how sumptuary laws shaped demand, using the concepts of supply scarcity and state regulation. TK-04, meanwhile, returns to the story of blue: it tells the path from the mines of Afghanistan to Venetian trade, from the Virgin Mary's blue cloak to 19th-century synthetic ultramarine.