The Kelsey Museum is pleased to present the first FAST lecture of the semester next Thursday, January 16th, in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Newberry Hall, Room 125. Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m. and the talk will begin at 6 p.m. The lecture will be given by Suzanne Davis, senior associate curator and head of conservation at the Kelsey Museum. Her talk is entitled "Dyeing to Know: Studying Colors in Karanis Textiles."
Pantone’s 2025 Color of the Year is Mocha Mousse, a color Pantone says, “nurtures us with its suggestion of the delectable qualities of chocolate and coffee, answering our desire for comfort.” While Kelsey Museum conservators are fairly sure that Mocha Mousse was not a favorite color in Roman Egypt—a culture that, sadly, also had no experience of either chocolate or coffee as delectable comfort foods—Pantone’s Classic Blue (2020) and Viva Magenta (2022) would have been strong contenders.
In this talk, Kelsey Museum conservator Suzanne Davis will present initial findings from a study of dyes in textiles from the Roman Egyptian town of Karanis, Egypt. This study is a subset of a larger project to look at color in the Kelsey Museum’s collections. Among other things, it has revealed that the textile workers of Karanis were highly sophisticated in their application and manipulation of color and that favorite colors for embellishing fabrics were a classic navy blue, a bright and bold red, and a wide range of pinks and purples—all skillfully modulated to achieve specific decorative effects.
FAST lectures are free and open to the public.
