Orange: The colour of warmth, autumn, warning… and of course, Le Creuset cookware.
With over 200 colour possibilities available to Cord customers, we do nonetheless see some colours popping up on our order sheets time and time again. One such colour is RAL 2008/Pantone 1585 (which matches Le Creuset’s volcanic orange), leading us to assume that many of you are choosing the colour of your new kitchen table’s legs to match your cookware (très chic). Or, the contents of your fruit bowl.
Covering the range of colours between red and yellow on the colour wheel, orange is abundant in both nature and the manmade world, showing up on everything from carrots to traffic cones. As a natural, earthy pigment it was used in ancient artwork, but orange didn’t exist as a specific colour until the late 15th Century, when Portuegese merchants returning from Asia introduced the orange tree to Europe. Until then, orange was known simply as “yellow-red”, but the fruit of the orange tree (known by its Sanskrit name naranga and gradually mutated) gave the colour its name – making it the only colour to be named after an object.
"Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow."
Wassily Kandinsky - Abstract Artist
A common colour in the 1970s, orange returned to popularity in 2012 when “Tangerine Tango” was announced as Pantone’s “Colour of the Year”, although it’s been a staple in many kitchens for over ninety years. In 1925 two Belgian industrialists, Armand Desaegher and Octave Aubecq, opened their foundry and factory in Fresnoy-le-Grand and began producing Le Creuset enamelled cast iron cookware. Named for the crucible used in the casting process (and represented in the company’s logo), the origins of their signature volcanic orange (sometimes also called flame orange) colouring has several origin stories; one is that it is inspired by the colour of the molten iron as it was poured into the first sand cast, whilst another attributes it to an event nine years later in 1934 when the company’s owner saw a Scandinavian cooker in the same colour. Whichever story is true, with Le Creuset now offering over 100 different colours it is still volcanic orange that reigns supreme.
Featured Product: Hairpin Leg Dining Set in oak, with legs in colour code RAL2008