Fiestaware (Fiesta® Dinnerware) has been brightening up dinner tables since they first introduced their color saturated dinnerware, during the drab days of the depression. Created by the Homer Laughlin China Company of Newell, West Virginia, since 1936 (with a hiatus from 1973 to 1985), Fiestaware was started "with the intent of giving people who were having a real miserable time something that wasn't expensive, that could brighten up their table, make their live a little cheerier," says president Joe Wells III in an quote from a recent article in the Oregonian, and they did it using color.

Fiestaware's signature solid colored Art Deco style was designed by Frederick Hurten Rhead, and first launched in a brilliant red.

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Today, rare pieces and colors can be worth thousands, like the covered onion soup bowl in turquoise which was only produced for one year in 1973, which is valued at $8,000.

Fiestaware has bee produced in 40 colors with at least one new shade being added each year since 2000. The latest color was inspired by Michelle Obama's inauguration dress, a yellow-green hue named lemongrass.

Inspired by this post I went looking for other examples of Russian color & design and came across this site.

"Most posters in our collection are originals, acquired in Russia in the 80's, political posters, made in the period 1950 - 1990, published with the supervision of the Communist Party, and were designed to make people work harder, be better communists and good patriots. Please be careful, most of these posters contain ruthless propaganda. Let's take them as historical artefacts..."

At the completion of French artist Pierre David's residency last May at the Modern Art Museum of Bahia in Brazil, he left behind a interesting and thoughtful exhibition celebrating color and the uniqueness of multiracial cultures. In Naucier, Pierre, commenting on racism, photographed 40 people, employees of the Musuem and art students from El Salvador, and displayed their images in classic color swatch fashion. Each individuals color was also formulated into a paint.

"Because I think that both France and Brazil are multiracial societies where skin color is an important social divide," explains Pierr (Google translation), "The local society is openly multiracial.  The genesis of these two countries is very different, but in both cases, the problem of racism exists across society.  Here, as in France, the skin color is an important social brand. Reducing the interest shown by an individual solely on the color put in an immediate way the issue of racism."

Drew Struzan is an American Artist best known for his extensive movie poster work on some of the best-known films of all time. A particular favorite artist of film directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Struzan created distinct and indelible images for many of their film releases.

"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by as good tavern or inn." - Samuel Johnson

Nothing is more British than the pub, and being that it is such an important part of the English identity it is no wonder that great pride and consideration go into each pub sign.

Here is a collection of London pub signs from flickr user lincolnian.

The history of pub signs date back to the Roman times, when reliefs made of stone or terracotta were hung outside to denote the trade or profession of the occupants of the building. The sign of 'The Goat' suggested a dairy, 'The Mule driving a Mill' a bakery and 'Bacchus' (the Roman God) a wine merchant. One of the first Roman tavern signs was the 'Bush'. The 'Tabernae' would also hang vine leaves outside to show that they sold wine - in Britain, as vine leaves are rare, small bushes were placed outside. Early pubs hung long poles or ale stakes, which might have been used to stir the ale, outside their doors. If both wine and ale were sold, then both bush and pole would be hung outside.... read more about British pub history here.

Color inspiration from the collection of American movie posters at polishposter.com.

Batik is the process of creating intricate patterns on textiles with wax-resistant dyes. There seems to be some controversy surrounding the origins of the technique but according to the Wikipedia article discoveries showed it already exists in the Middle East, India and Central Asia over 2000 years ago. In Java, Indonesia, batik predates written records, but some experts argue that the technique might have been introduced during the 6th or 7th century from India.

Traditional colours include indigo, dark brown, and white which represent the three major Hindu Gods (Brahmā, Visnu, and Śiva). The colors of pesisir batik, from the coastal cities of northern Java, are especially vibrant, and it absorbs influence from the Javanese, Chinese and Dutch culture.

Contemporary batik, while owing much to the past, is markedly different from the more traditional and formal styles. For example, the artist may use etching, discharge dyeing, stencils, different tools for waxing and dyeing, wax recipes with different resist values and work with silk, cotton, wool, leather, paper or even wood and ceramics.

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Highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's collection of Japanese postcards from the early 1900's.

Playing cards were found in China as early as the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when relatives of a princess played a "leaf game". The Tang writer Su E  stated that Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, played the leaf game with members of the Wei clan to pass the time. The Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserted that card games existed since the mid Tang Dynasty and associated their invention with the simultaneous development of using sheets or pages instead of paper rolls as a writing medium. A book called Yezi Gexi was allegedly written by a Tang era woman, and was commented on by Chinese writers of subsequent dynasties.

Ancient Chinese "money cards" have four "suits": coins (or cash), strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), myriads of strings, and tens of myriads. These were represented by ideograms, with numerals of 2–9 in the first three suits and numerals 1–9 in the "tens of myriads". Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for. The designs on modern Mahjong tiles likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. However, it may be that the first deck of cards ever printed was a Chinese domino deck, in whose cards we can see all the 21 combinations of a pair of dice. In Kuei-t'ien-lu, a Chinese text redacted in the 11th century, we find that dominoes cards were printed during the Tang Dynasty, contemporary to the first printed books. The Chinese word pái (牌) is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles.

An Indian origin for playing cards has been suggested by the resemblance of symbols on some early European decks (traditional Sicilian cards, for example) to the ring, sword, cup, and baton classically depicted in the four hands of Indian statues.

The Rococo palette is softer and paler than the rich primary colors and dark tonalities favored in Baroque tastes.

Rococo is a style of 18th century French art and interior design. Rococo rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. It was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style.

The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, or stone garden (referring to arranging stones in natural forms like shells), and the Italian barocco, or Baroque style. Due to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely modish; when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned". However, since the mid 19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art.