GYPSY COLOURS

The image here of a striped book in red, yellow and black is:

An English Gypsy Word Book: Being George Borrow’s Romany Vocabulary Transposed Printed For Private Circulation Printed By Taylor and Francis Red Lion Court Fleet Street 1889

As soon as I saw this book I was intrigued by it’s colour which is unusual for a book of it’s time the edge of all the pages are also striped in the same colours. I have some knowledge of colours and their meaning connected with Folk Lore internationally and historically but investigated this more while researching especially when seeing the Catalogue Of The Romany Collection which uses the same colours – Caroline from the Special Collections found me a letter from 1962 when this catalogue was produced referring to them as ‘Gypsy Colours’. The colours have a number of meanings each but with the contents of the book being the Romany language and with Borrow swearing that Mrs Herne had poisoned him for ‘stealing her tongue’ I began to have ideas from the meanings of the colours that they were for protection. These colours reappear in different forms and patterns as end papers etc in a number of the items from the Dorothy Una Ratcliffe Collection. Inspired by this line of enquiry this will be something that will be included in the final art work but as a protection for us from those who continue to speak for us, about us and discriminate against us.