The Tumbrel Diaries of May 23, 2009 had a post The definitive Pavlova color spectrum that featured:
Complete chronological list of 31 references in the Argus newspaper (Melbourne) to “Pavlova” or “pavlova” as the name for a “new season” color, together with all accompanying named colors or shades, 1926–28
The entries are studded with impressively outré color names, e.g. (from April 26, 1926) “tangerine, amourette, nilesque, veronese, tan, Pavlova, oriflamme, rust, and burnt oak” and (from Sept. 20) “pervenche [periwinkle blue], bois de rose, plum, navy, white, brown, raisin, champagne, wine, mulberry, nattier, vieux rose saxe, rose, beige, chardron, parma, Pavlova, cocoa, and black.” The Conclusion begins:
Of the thirty-one wholly explicit uses in print of Pavlova or pavlova as the name for a color, all occur in advertisements placed by seven Melbourne department stores in the Argus newspaper between April 26, 1926, and October 20, 1928, whereupon the term utterly vanishes from sight.
And a good thing too — there were quite enough colors to keep track of as it was. Thanks, Trevor!
Incidentally, I hadn’t heard of the Argus, but the Wikipedia article says “The Argus was an Australian daily morning newspaper in Melbourne from 2 June 1846 to 19 January 1957, and was considered to be the general Australian newspaper of record for this period”; then at the end of the History section it says “On 19 January 1957, after 110 years, seven months and 17 days, the final edition of The Argus was published.” No explanation of why it went out of business; you’d think “the general Australian newspaper of record” would have been pretty well established.
The pavlova dessert also originates in Australia in the 1920s. There seems to have been an Anna Pavlova craze after her visit to Oz/NZ about that time.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71777025
Thanks! But it still seems odd they couldn’t make it work when presumably other newspapers were able to do so.
I am guessing Pavlova was some flavour of off-white? The quotes don’t offer much evidence
@Y originates in Australia in the 1920s.
As a patriotic, New Zealander, I feel duty bound to challenge that. Aussies are always claiming our stuff as theirs (Phar Lap, John Clarke).
says wikip, amongst a great number of unverifiable claims for its origins.
@AntC: I am ashamed. I feel like a rock star starting off a show in Wellington with “How are you, Australia!!!”
(Bad example. Rock stars have no shame.)
I am guessing Pavlova was some flavour of off-white? The quotes don’t offer much evidence
I am wondering about this too. There are some Google hits for pavlova as a light pastel shade of orange.
Although the typically(?) creamy color of Pavlova’s costume for the The Dying Swan may have inspired the name for the meringue, I even wonder if there is continuity between the color name as used in 1920s and any contemporary use of pavlova for a meringue-like color. Could it have been the color of another costume, or even of a dress of hers that made a splash in Melbourne?
(For example, with her own company on tour after 1911, Pavlova apparently often programmed a divertissement called En orange, choreographed by Alexander Gorsky to an arrangement by Glazunov of an air by Ernest Guiraud. Or take this review from a 1925 performance in Melbourne that specifically mentions the effectiveness of a lavender costume for Rondino. Etc., etc.)
Maybe some heavy-duty reading of reviews and society pages in old newspapers would yield some answers.
There are several flower varieties of that period named Pavlova: a white Hippeastrum, a brilliant orange Begonia, a “claret-couloured” Odontoglossum.
The Dyer and Calico Printer of 5/15/1926 (here) says, “Pavlova.— In this case a mixture of Azo Geranine 2G and Delphinol would not be bright enough, and Fast Acid Violet RR may be used.” These are respectively red and purple.
Let the record show that pavlova is invariably pronounced, un-Russianly, on the penultimate. Mum used to make one on any special occasion.
The Age* in Melbourne, with its sibling daily the Sydney Morning Herald, won the competition for dominance. They held onto it for decades, at least until the recent general decline in press journalism. Both went tabloid in 2013, and we serious readers knew that the Last Days were upon us.
* By firmly settled conventional The is capped and italicised as part of its name.
“The Pavlova Spectrum” sounds like one of those Robert Ludlum novels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ludlum_bibliography
I always figured that Ludlum, consciously or otherwise, started off modeling his novel titles on The IPCRESS File.
It’s a trilogy: The Pavlova Spectrum; The Battenberg Gamut; The Madeleine Diapason.
The printers will smile at the Pavlova Matching System references.
#baab87. Pantone 4241 CP.
The Boilwater Advisory.
#baab87. Pantone 4241 CP
Beige??
Let the record show that pavlova is invariably pronounced, un-Russianly, on the penultimate
I pronounce the dessert name with penultimate stress even in Russian (where it had been borrowed), but by the time I actually encountered the dessert I already knew it was supposed to be pronounced that way. My parents tend to use the same stress as in the surname.
If I had ever been called upon to Name That Pudding, I too would have said Pávlova.
I am grateful to LH for saving me from might well have been an embarrassing faux pas, had the matter ever chanced to arise.
(Obviously it’s Pávlova in the Ludlum thriller.)
The Dyer and Calico Printer of 5/15/1926 (here) says, “Pavlova.— In this case a mixture of Azo Geranine 2G and Delphinol would not be bright enough, and Fast Acid Violet RR may be used.” These are respectively red and purple.
Excellent!
The previous volume of The Dyer and Calico Printer, volume 54, p. 42, bottom of first column (1 August 1925), here, lists Pavlova mauve alongside among other colors being promoted, nilesque and amourette (also mentioned in the excerpts from the Melbourne paper). Compare this from two weeks later. One has the feeling we are dealing with endlessly recycled boilerplate from trade conventions or supplier catalogues. I wonder what the original source could be.
It seems that Pavlova was fond of mauve. Take for instance, Markova’s account of the first time she met Pavlova and the effect it had on Markova, who then surrounded herself with mauve objects, mauve flowers, etc. (as at the bottom of this page, and on the following page, if that is visible to LH readers). Pavlova’s appartments at one time were apparently mauve and silver; there is a description of a costume worn for her often-performed Rondino as mauve; etc., etc.
JFM:
I pronounce the dessert name with penultimate stress even in Russian (where it had been borrowed), …
Do you mean “whence it had been borrowed”? This would suggest that qua name for a dessert it existed in Russian before in English. Across Anglophonia (certainly in Australia) the ballerina’s name was pronounced on the penultimate (“incorrectly”: compare ˈGorbachev, and for that matter ˈEcuador or ˈSalvador ˈDalí), and that anglicisation is the source of the dessert’s name. Right?
“Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.”
It’s not like that has a regular enough meter to be sure how the poet meant the stress pattern to fall in “Pavlova” but I think I’ve always read it in my mind w/ penultimate stress rather than antepenult. Although perhaps I have not had enough occasion to overhear people speaking in English about either the ballerina or the (not particularly North American?) dessert. I don’t have any sort of rigorous empirical data on this, but I wonder if the feminine suffix changes default Anglicized stress? Nabokov’s surname was usually pronounced by Americans with antepenult stress even though the man himself preferred penultimate stress, as was known by those with an incentive to stay on his good side (e.g. my father when he was one of Nabokov’s students in the late 1950’s). But if his wife had not adopted the American custom of using her husband’s uninflected surname but had insisted on being known in English-language contexts as “Vera Nabokova,” I think a lot of Americans would instinctively use penultimate stress, i.e. stressing what corresponds to the final syllable in the masculine version of the name.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught mauver.
The pome could only be by Pound (he’s one of those instantly recognisable poets) but the sentiment is close to that expressed by another it-could-only-be-him poet:
https://poets.org/poem/sun-rising