Royal

9″ x 6″ ink on paper. Hand-signed and dated.

The colour purple has represented royalty since antiquity. Tyrian purple (AKA the original Royal Purple) specifically was made from the mucus of the Murex sea snail, harvested by the thousands and crushed to extract mere drops of dye. It took an estimated 250,000 snails to produce a single ounce of pigment, a process so slow, foul-smelling, and expensive that the color became reserved, often by law, for emperors and the divine. There’s something wonderfully ironic about it: the world’s most exalted colour, worn by kings and gods, began as snail slime pulled from the sea. A fitting garment for those who glorify themselves while crushing others to get to the top.