Color in India

Panorma of Jodhpur (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodhpur)

from http://www.indiamarks.com/jodhpur-india-the-blue-city/

photo by izzet keribar

 

 

 

Looking for some images today of aerial views of cities, I came across the top photo of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, India.  Stunned to say the least, a city in blue, it propelled me to look into this interesting city and its choice of blue exteriors.

Here is some information about the city

(from: http://www.indiamarks.com/jodhpur-india-the-blue-city/)

Jodhpur is the second largest city in Rajasthan in India and is also known as the blue city because the color gives an indigo aura to it with blue colored houses surrounding the Mehrangarh Fort. Also known as the Sun City due to its perennial sunny weather, it receives sparse rainfall and is located in the Thar Desert. Jodhpur is a famous tourist attraction and offers myriad places of interest that have significant historical importance. It is also famous for its well preserved forts that are adorned with exquisite intricate carvings and pieces of art. The city is teeming with bazaars and crowded with tourists and is comparatively more populated than other cities in Rajasthan.

Some ideas for why the buildings are painted blue:

(from: http://www.2weekbackpack.com/Jodhpur/Jodhpur-blue-city.html)  

The district of Jodhpur that is painted light blue is generally where the highest cast of Hindus live. This high cast is referred to as "Brahmins" and traditionally were priests and town leaders. The color blue in India is commonly associated with royalty and power . One motivation for the blue painting of Jodhpur is that the higher cast Brahmins wished their dwellings to be of the Royal color and this is the commonly accepted reason.

The residents of Jodhpur are extremely proud of the city's blue color. When pushed for an answer as to why the city is blue they usually respond by saying it keeps the buildings cool during the punishing summer. This answer usually puzzles visitors who fail to understand why Rajasthan's other great cities are not also painted blue. 

The true reason for Jodhpur's blue color is more practical motivated than artistic reasoning. The dry arid environment of which Jodhpur is located is blighted by termites. The small insects damaged and destroyed the traditional building techniques which involved the exterior being coated in lime wash. It was discovered that the termites were repelled by copper salt compounds and these were added in low concentrations to the lime washes. Copper solutions under certain conditions produce blue compounds and this was true of the materials applied to the exterior of Jodhpur's houses.

 

The Brahmin class could afford the copper sulphate lime washes and applied it to their houses which were concentrated in just one area of the city. It is therefore commonly thought that the Brahmins painted their houses the blue color to emphasize their royal connection when in actual fact they were the ones only able to afford the specialist exterior paint. The blue of Jodhpur is best viewed from Meherangarh Fort where an entire side of the city is painted in this one uniform blue color.

The Blue in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland

BLUE

I don't think there is any way to accurately describe this color blue.

Actually, not only the blue of the water but in combination with the

color blue of the sky.

FINALLY! SPRING IN UPSTATE NEW YORK!

We finally are seeing some beautiful spring colors here in upstate New York. In particular, spring green, pink, and white.  Here are a few flowering trees I shot last week. They seem dramatic more so due to the blue sky in the background - a type of light we hardly ever see in Ithaca. How these colors translate to interior design - I can only speculate.

Candy Green (#403) color combination

 

Strawberry (2085-50) color combination

Twilight blue (2067-30) and white combo

Venice Color

I have this photograph as my desktop background and was sitting staring at it for awhile this evening and noticed this section of the photograph where colored window openings were noticeable as an interesting grid of cool tones.

While I tend to think of Italian colors as reds, oranges and browns - this section was noticeable for its canal hues of blue and green.

Blue

I am generally not a fan of the color blue (for clothing or walls).  However, blue skies and the amazing blue of glaciated lakes are an exception.  Here is a photo of the amazing blue of Lake Louise in Banff National Park in Canada.  I have never seen it in person, but hopefully that will change soon!  (The chip is from Benjamin Moore and the small square is from using the color sampler tool in Photoshop).

 

The following is taken courtesy of pbs.org which helps to describe why the color of 

glaciated lakes is this unique milky blue color.

"A brilliant greenish blue"

"Moving glaciers grind together the rocks frozen within them, pulverizing them into powdery rock flour, which is generally very pale gray, almost white. The warmth of the long summer afternoons of the most recent ice age sent great freshets of glacial meltwater, milky white with suspended rock flour, into Glacial Lake Missoula. Rock flour settled through the murky water and deposited as a layer of pale sediment on the floor of the lake. Those pale summer layers varied in thickness from a fraction of an inch to as much as two inches or even more."

lSource: pbs.org