THE COLOUR BROWN

MEANING

The colour brown represents royalty, luxury, wealth wisdom and dignity. The colour of soil, growth, fertility, and earth, it is often associated with all things natural and organic.  It symbolises steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, health, warmth, and peace.

Negative meanings of brown include dull, boring, frugal, and materialistic.

HISTORY

Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times. Paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC. Paintings of brown horses and other animals have been found on the walls of the Lascaux cave dating back about 17,300 years. The female figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings have brown skin, painted with umber. Light tan was often used on painted Greek amphorae and vases, either as a background for black figures, or the reverse.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans produced a fine reddish-brown ink, of a colour called sepia, made from the ink of a variety of cuttlefish. This ink was used by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and other artists during the Renaissance, and by artists up until the present time.

In Ancient Rome, brown clothing was associated with the lower classes or barbarians. The term for the plebeians, or urban poor, was "pullati", which meant literally "those dressed in brown"

In the Middle Ages brown robes were worn by monks of the Franciscan order, as a sign of their humility and poverty. Each social class was expected to wear a colour suitable to their station; and grey and brown were the urs of the poor. 

In the Middle Ages dark brown pigments were rarely used in art; painters and book illuminators artists of that period preferred bright, distinct colours such as red, blue, and green, rather than dark colours. The umbers were not widely used in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century; The Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described them as being rather new in his time.

The 17th and 18th century saw the greatest use of brown. Caravaggio and Rembrandt Van Rijn used browns to create chiaroscuro effects, where the subject appeared out of the darkness. Rembrandt also added umber to the ground layers of his paintings because it promoted faster drying.

Brown was generally hated by the French impressionists, who preferred bright, pure colours. The exception among French 19th-century artists was Paul Gauguin, who created luminous brown portraits of the people and landscapes of French Polynesia.

Brown has been a popular colour for military uniforms since the late 18th century, largely because of its wide availability and low visibility.

In 1846 the Indian soldiers of the Corps of Guides in British India began to wear a yellowish shade of tan, which became known as khaki from the Urdu word for dust-coloured, taken from an earlier Persian word for soil. The colour made an excellent natural camouflage.

In the 1920s, brown became the uniform colour of the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA) wore brown uniforms and were known as the brownshirts. The colour brown was used to represent the Nazi vote on maps of electoral districts in Germany. If someone voted for the Nazis, they were said to be "voting brown". The national headquarters of the Nazi party, in Munich, was called the Brown House. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was called the Brown Revolution. Brown had originally been chosen as a Party colour largely for convenience; large numbers of war-surplus brown uniforms from Germany's former colonial forces in Africa were cheaply available in the 1920s. It also suited the working-class and military images that the Party wished to convey.

In the late 20th century, brown became a common symbol in western culture for simple, inexpensive, natural, and healthy. Bag lunches were carried in plain brown paper bags; packages were wrapped in plain brown paper. Brown bread and brown sugar were viewed as more natural and healthier than white bread and white sugar.

Surveys in Europe and the United States showed that brown was the least popular colour among respondents. It was the favourite colour of only one percent of respondents.

BROWN AND BRANDING

Brown communicates strength, ruggedness, nature, earth, and seriousness. While practical, it can also suggest a degree of sophistication. Because of its outdoorsy feel, brown is often associated with organic, wholesome, or all-natural products.

Brown can evoke feelings of reliability, support, stability, structure, and trustworthiness. Brown can also connote comfort and contentment. Think associations with coffee, chocolate, or dark beers.