bister

[prettygoodword]

bister or bistre (BIS-ter) - n., a yellowish-brown to dark brown pigment made from wood soot; a dark greyish brown color (#3D2B1F:                ).


The pigment is most often used in pen drawing or wash painting such as this one by Fragonard:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

Dictionaries, even art glossaries, seem evenly divided as to whether bister or bistre is the primary spelling, which reflects how much technical language of art has been taken from French, as bistre is the original French spelling -- it dates to the 16th century but is origin entirely unknown, to my surprise.

---L.

Comments

You always make learning fun and

[jesse_the_k]

Adding the HTML value was chef's kiss

Re: You always make learning fun and

[prettygoodword]

I don't always remember to include the HTML value for colors. Managed to this time.

[full_metal_ox]

I can tell you where a lot of 21st-century English-language romance and fantasy readers first encountered the word: Kushiel’s Dart (2001) by Jacqueline Carey, in the heroine’s self-description:

My skin, too fair for the canon of Jasmine House(1), was nonetheless a perfectly acceptable shade of ivory. My hair, which grew to curl in charming profusion, was the color of sable-in-shadows, reckoned a coup in some of the Houses. My limbs were straight and supple, my bones a marvel of delicate strength…My eyes, when they settled, were that color the poets call bistre, a deep and lustrous darkness, like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks. Outside Terre d’Ange, perhaps, one might call it brown, but the language spoke outside our nation’s bounds is a pitiful thing when it comes to describing beauty.

(Phèdre also has a red birthmark in her left eye, that, as with Rudolph the Reindeer, initially marks her as defective in the eyes of her peers but later proves to be a sign of her unique power and specialness. This leads to the world-specific color term sangoire, a blackened red reserved for those of Phèdre’s rare and revered neurotype.)

(1) For context: Terre D’Ange is an Alternate Fantasy Renaissance France whose people are descended from fallen angels and renowned for their superhuman beauty; Phèdre was brought up in an order of elite sacred courtesans whose appearance is graded as ruthlessly as that of show dogs, and with a similar exactitude of vocabulary. The Night Court has thirteen Houses, each catering to a different aspect of love and sexuality and each with a different “breed standard”; Jasmine House, where Phèdre’s mother had worked, favors a dark-complected “Bodhistani” (Alternate Fantasy East Indian) look.

[prettygoodword]

I'd forgotten that.