Pantone Color for 2014 Radiant Orchid - A Tall Order for Glass Beadmakers!

Radiant Orchid

Pantone - the influencial color design company - just announced their color of the year for 2014 - a gorgeous pinkish purple called Radiant Orchid. It's such a lovely color - I could hear the jubilant cheers of designers from here!

However, as I am sure lots of glass beadmakers would agree, it's kind of a mixed bag for us in the lampworking world. While Radiant Orchid is really beautiful, it's not an easy color to find in glass.

The closest hue I can see would be Effetre's 254 Opaque Purple, which is nicknamed EDP, or Evil Devitrifying Purple. Most glass beadmakers I have talked to have a love/hate relationship with EDP, me included. It's a singularly beautiful shade of orchid purple, but it has a habit of blooming into a chalky, yucky, pitted pinkish matte color when worked in the flame. Encasing it is damn near impossible.

One of the only times I used EDP successfully - as a base and as frit.

These days, EDP has been reformulated and has come in several batches, each one having a little less of a tendency to devitrify, thank goodness.  The most recent batch I bought doesn't devit nearly as much as the original, but it still bleeds and spreads when you layer it.  Therefore, it's best used as a base, which really limits its usability for me. Frantz Art Glass has a blog post about working with devitrifying glass - and it is helpful for those beads that just have EDP as a base. 

There are some beadmakers out there who do amazing things with EDP, and have learned how to coax out the best properties of the color - and to those miracle workers I doff my cap to you.

Lavender glass with Rubino scrolls - somewhat close to Radiant Orchid?

In the days ahead, I am going to try and layer different shades of pink and purple to see if I can approximate Pantone's Radiant Orchid - we'lll have to see if I am successful.  It should be a fun journey!

Pantone Color Trends - little video snippet

This is super cool! Pantone expert talks about how colors are chosen for trends in the years to come.

I love Pantone, and I totally covet the job this woman has.

I Must Confess

I love color trends!! You know the ones I mean - the seasonal release of color swatches wayyyy in advance by trendsetting organizations like Pantone and CIFF. I don't stick to those colors exactly when I look for beadmaking inspiration, but I love to look and fantasize about color combinations.

Pantone's Spring 2009 report is out, and I must say - I am kind of underwhelmed. That's not a huge surprise, though - I get more excited by fall and winter color selections. Spring's selection of colors is kind of muted - a soft, understated and even somewhat gloomy. With the exception of the a couple of colors, which are kind of strange in the mix.

Left to right - Fuchsia Red, Salmon Rose, Rose-Dust, Lavender, Slate Grey, Lucite Green, Vibrant Green, Dark Citron, Super Lemon.



I do love that bright magenta shade called Fuchsia Red. I've been longing for a shade like that in an opaque glass....wouldn't that be gorgeous? Someday some glass company is going to come out with that color and I am going to buy ALL of it. :)

And then there's Super Lemon. You know, I have always been of the mind that no matter what the color is, there's always a place for it somewhere. LOL I might have to change my mind about that here, though. Super Lemon is just.....not my cup of tea. The acidic but almost sickly nature of that color just does not fit anywhere for me. Especially not in a spring color palette. But, hey, color is a subjective thing, and I am sure there are lots of people out there who love it.

I do like the blues and greens for the 2009 Spring season.....they seem to go well together, and give a kind of calm, breezy feeling that goes well with Spring.



The Salmon Rose color is nice - maybe a bit too dark for me....but it looks exactly like Reichenbach's Opal Raspberry 104 glass, and that's really pretty stuff.



Not so sure about the Rose Dust shade - that kind of color needs a buddy, it's so faded. Pair it with the Slate Gray or the Lucite Green and I'm on board.

I would say that most of the colors in the Spring palette do have a glass counterpart in the 104 line - and if they don't, they can be layered to achieve the right color. However, because the palette isn't as exciting to me as past Spring palettes, I probably won't be matching them up much this year.

Now, the Lenzing Color Trend for spring/summer 2009 is a little better - especially in the women's wear section. The Pantone main colors are there, but they have selected a bunch more to kind of fill out the palette, making it a bit more spring-like and cheerful. The addition of some coral shades as well as some lovely denim and cornflower blues add happiness to the palette. Yum. :)

Of course, there's something really weird about the fact that these trendy sites are coming up with color/fashion selections so far in advance. They even have some of 2010 planned out. Just makes me wonder - who gets to pick out trendsetting colors? What makes them pick certain shades? It does seem that the rest of the fashion and home interior industries do follow along with these trends...and it is kind of fun to wonder - why? Yes, there's some jealousy showing...I would adore being one of the people who gets to pick colors for the upcoming seasons. What an amazing job that would be.

At any rate - color trends are fun to follow. They don't limit me, but they do give me ideas. I just may be breaking out the soft blues and greens a bit early this year. :)