A color for shoes and signs and big wines

Oxblood on the brain

What color is blood?

When I was small, I thought it was blue. The veins on the inside of my wrists and elbows look like frail purple branches, so it wasn’t hard to believe that my insides were soaked in that twilight color. I remember believing there was even a scientific explanation for this telling: supposedly, our blood turned red when it was exposed to the air, that it’s only our spilled blood that glows ruby. Of course, this isn’t true. Human blood is red. Horseshoe crabs have blue blood, and some skinks have lime green blood. But mammalian blood is red and warm. That’s our thing.

Today, I’m thinking about oxblood. I’m not writing about “blood red” because that term refers to an entirely separate color. Blood red is bright and lipsticky, splashy and hot. Blood red is a good color for sports cars and satin dresses—there’s a slickness to it that reminds me of the 20th century and its obsession with big screen showmanship. Oxblood is horse of a different color. It isn’t as brown or purple as puce (the color of a squished flea) but it has more depth and mud than ruby. In French, this color is known as sang-de-bœuf. According to Wikipedia, it’s also sometimes called “temptress” though there is no source listed for that factoid and I’ve certainly never heard anyone use that color name before. Most of us English speakers know it as oxblood. It’s still a bloody hue, but it’s removed from any questions of human mortality or morality by that simple prefix. The word “oxblood” does not remind me of cutting flesh or leaking bodies; it brings to mind the civilized rituals of dressing up, eating out, window shopping, and city strolling. It’s a leather color, a wine color, a fashion color. It’s the color of old glass, ancient ceramics, and late career Rothko.

Oxblood is a lesser red, which is probably why I like it. We’re taught that there are three primary colors—red, yellow, blue—but sometimes I think there’s only one. From our earliest days as art-making beings, people have gravitated towards red. “Painters have always loved red, from the Paleolithic period to the most contemporary,” writes Michel Pastoureau. “Very early on, red’s palette came to offer a variety of shades and to favor more diverse and subtle chromatic play than any other color.” Pliny, he notes, had more to say about red than any other hue. Plus, red was easy enough to make. There was red earth (made from ochre) and reds made from tree saps. There was red made from crushed bugs and red made from plant roots. One recipe from 1400s Lombardy suggests you “take an ox” and bleed it to get a “good red paint.” But the preferred pigment for bad reds was always usually dragon’s blood:

Various legends circulated in workshops regarding this pigment, a relatively expensive one because it had to be imported from far away. It was believed to come not from a plant resin but from the blood of a dragon, gored by its mortal enemy, the elephant. According to medieval bestiaries, which followed Pliny and the ancient authors here, the inside of the dragon’s body was filled with blood and fire; after a fierce struggle, when the elephant had punctured the dragon’s belly with its tusks, out flowed a thick, foul, red liquid, from which was made a pigment used to paint all the shades of red considered evil. Legend won out over knowledge in this case, and painters’ choices gave priority to the symbolism of the name over the chemical properties of the pigment.

This is the red that painters used to depict demons or hellfire or other unpleasant things. It was a bad red, an angry red, an impure red, tainted with brown or yellow or gray. Dragon’s blood was not what artists reached for when they wanted to liven the rosy cheeks of cherubs. It was the color of punishment.

Oxblood isn’t quite as mystical as all that (though raw Dragon’s blood looks pretty similar to oxblood if you ask me). This particular form of red tends to reside in the decorative arts, the so-called “minor” arts. There, it’s not an obscure or unwanted color. Shoe hounds and ceramicists will both know it well. It’s a common descriptor for leather goods and according to some sources, it was once a literal one. Apparently, medieval tanners used animal blood to dye hides as well as brains to tan them. The industry is less nose-to-tail these days, though the color name lives on. (Here’s a pair of Valentino boots in oxblood and here’s an absolutely perfect little shoulder bag.) I own a pair of oxblood Dr. Martens platforms that are too heavy for any sort of grace; they demand you stomp. I don’t wear them very often though the color suits my wardrobe. It blends in with the bricks of New England and the clay-dense dirt of Maine.

While oxblood isn’t quite the same color as red ochre, it does have ties to the terra-cotta family of hues, which typically get their color from iron or copper. In the 17th century, Chinese artists began producing a distinct kind of red-glazed porcelain that was embraced by Europeans as sang-de-bœuf or “sacrificial red.” This color was very difficult to make and often resulted in uneven, speckled, or molted surfaces. Like celadon, there was an element of mystery involved in the production of these pieces. They weren’t hidden from sight like the light green ceramics were (too beautiful to be seen by common eyes!) but these deep red wares were prized by royals in China and coveted by nobility elsewhere. However, the term “sacrificial red” was sometimes misunderstood as referring to a blood sacrifice. No oxen (or people) were harmed in the making of sang-de-boeuf pots and dishes; they were simply used to hold offerings during religious ceremonies. In an essay about the phenomenon of “Chinese Red” in arts and culture, the National Museum of Asian Art argues that although oxblood isn’t the brightest or purest red, it’s actually pretty fantastic. “While this shade may not initially strike you as ‘Chinese red,’ spending time with our dish may prove that its particular hue is the most mesmerizing red of all,” the piece concludes.

I keep casting oxblood as scarlet’s overlooked older sister but that’s not my fault. Ruby gets more play in the world of glass, too. I’ve always been a fan of Bohemian red glassware, never suspecting that there was another, darker red to consider. A few weeks ago, I met a neon artist who hates trendy LED lights and refuses to take commissions for wedding signs. His signs are his art, and he likes to work with a rich, intense color palette. Sometimes, this means sourcing vintage. The holy grail for most people in the neon scene, he explained, is finding a cache of old oxblood glass tubes. “It looks so dark it’s almost black until you turn it on,” he said. Once you flip the switch, the particles of that noble gas get all excited and amped up, bouncing around against each other, producing light. The tube glows, emitting a deep, intense red, “like a dying star.” I told him that stars were that color because of iron—Falu red, barn color, earth color. He said in glass, it was usually a dab of gold that got you to red. While blue paint was the hardest to come by for much of human history, red glass was pricier than cobalt blue because of its chemical composition. Cobalt is plentiful. Gold is not.

Oxblood, of course, looks fantastic paired with gold. The glimmer of metal brings out the rich earthiness of a matte red, elevating the brown undertones and revealing its natural warmth. When worn together, gold energizes oxblood. The designers at Valentino know this. In the past decade, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have pushed the bounds of the famous Valentino red gown (traditionally a flat tomato-y red) to include chiffon dresses decorated with snake appliqués and regal sweeping velvet dresses, both in bold oxblood and shown paired with gold accessories. In 2012, oxblood was hailed as the “it” color by a number of different publications. Though it has never risen to the level of Millennial pink, oxblood has had its moments in the world of fashion. It’s a rather 60s color that can read slightly mod and sassy, though it’s also found frequently in outdoorsy apparel. It’s a traditional part of many different plaids, and while it looks good on velvet, I think oxblood looks even better in wool. There’s something about animal textures that works with the color. It highlights how much of what we wear is borrowed finery—our leathers, our feathers, our fibers, our pearls. I like it when oxblood apparel looks a little rough or perhaps even a tiny bit dirty. It has the rustic glamor of under-eye shadows caused by late nights and too much wine. It reminds me of lesser sins.

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I know I said oxblood didn’t call to mind the liquid reality of blood, but I’ve begun to wonder if that’s really right. I’ve spent a few weeks thinking about cattle blood—and reindeer blood and blood letting and blood drinking and blood washing. Blood captivates. You don’t have to be a maniac like Peter Thiel or Elizabeth of Báthory to see that. It’s a substance that brims with meaning, even when it’s not human. Consuming blood is symbolically rich and feels more than a little taboo. When given the opportunity to drink drink reindeer blood and eat reindeer blood pancakes, I didn’t hesitate. Yes, I will take my cakes laced with blood. The liquid itself was blackish purple, a deep menacing red that spoke to its iron content—a necessity for life in the far north, I’ve been told.

Aside from those few dalliances with animal blood, I’ve never really been close to the substance. I’ve never butchered anything larger than a fish and I don’t work in a hospital or a laundromat. The color of blood still feels like an abstract question, though what could be more material, more immediate, more pressing than the rivers that run through my body? Menstrual blood, I have to admit, tends to be very oxblood in hue. When Pantone announced their 2015 pick for color of the year, a warm earthy maroon named “Marsala,” I remember my coworkers at Jezebel joking that it was “the color of a used sanitary pad.”

But I don’t want to leave you with that image, because I think these iron-rich garnet colors deserve better than bodily castoffs. Instead, I’ll tell you about a wine I once loved, a place I miss, a time when things were different.

Once, decades ago, I spent an afternoon drinking Bull’s Blood in a Hungarian cellar. I had heard about the famous wine before I left for Budapest from my mother, who said it was the only thing she really knew about Hungary. “In the 80s, we drank a lot of Bull’s Blood,” she said. “It was strong and cheap.” I don’t remember nearly enough about the day in the vineyards—I was young and dumb and drank too much to remember the fun I was having—but I remember how my mouth turned dark and stained and I remember how I tripped on the medieval cobblestones and ripped my palms open. I was more often bloodying myself in those days.

I am not, by most people’s standards, well-traveled. I think often about the places I’ve been and I write a lot about them, because they matter to me. You know that joke about kids who go on a semester abroad and return saying Budapeshhhht? Well, that wasn’t me. I had heard the joke often enough, so I came back and deliberately mispronounced the name of the city where I had spent the last six months. There’s a part of me that’s embarrassed even now to be thinking about Bull’s Blood, to be writing about it. But I return to those experiences for a reason: they shine like neon lights. My personal history can feel dingy, especially when I focus on the mud seasons and the days that drag.

Now, though, I find myself wishing I spent more time looking at wine and less time drinking it, more time listening to people and less time talking to them. I wish I had learned more about Bull’s Blood. Now, I can read about it—it’s named because supposedly invading armies observed Hungarian warriors drinking chalices of dark liquid before battle and wrongfully assumed those fearsome Magyars were sipping blood. It’s produced in an area called the Valley of the Beautiful Women, though it’s not really known for producing beautiful women but rather lovely, strong, leggy horses. Like anywhere, Hungary was a place full of stories and colors but I was too busy being young and dancing. I should have I paid more attention to the cobblestones when I had a chance.