COLOUR STORY FOR COMING SEASONS

Chronicle (Levin), 29 March 1946, Page 3

COLOUR STORY FOR COMING SEASONS

The British Colour Council, taking inspiration from a sphere in which our airrnen have exeelled, sponsors "Airvvay colours" for 1946. Just after the last war we cruised the seas, so after this we shall cruise the skies. Already to Air Eorce personnel the shapes of clouds and their syrnbols are common subject for conversation. Cirrus, euniulus, stratus, will soon be everyday words and daily flight through sky and cloud will make cloud forms and the trappings of flying more generally familiar, states an overseas report. !So once again the B.C.C. 's colour theme suggests ideas for designs as well as j colour blendiug. The trained watcher of the skies is familiar not only with the cloud shapes, which he interprets by means of uieteorological syrnbols, thenxselves as decorative and useful to the modern designcr as were the cloud scroll bands used by ('liinese artists centuries ago, he also lcnows the broad structural lipes on which these shapes may be arranged. So far the designer, the display artist and decorator, there is inspiration in the recurrent inovement of cloud masses; the delicate bands of cirrus crossing the sky in meridan lines their featliery plumes and fibrous network, the rippling waves or fleecy layers of liigh cumulus — all these suggest backgronnd and motif for design. Then there are the moving domes, castles and turrets which presage thunder cloud, the ragged low sound of bad weather, the billowing sail's of fair weather cumulus, all providing material for artist and designer, a direction of line and pattern, a new direction symbolic of man's swift conquest of the air. So we are to have cloud pastels, airway colours, such as desert glow, hazel brown, green haze, ocean green, tropic tan, venetian green, hermes blue and strata blue typical of the colour naraes which create the illusion of space and distance of stratospheric travel and faroff places. ' ' Ports of Call ' ' are glowing colours, among them Canberra lime, Karachi Lake, Prestwick green, Lagos gold, recalling the excitement, the pleasure, the strange atmosphere of arrivai and departure in distant ports.