True Colours

The landscape of outport Newfoundland is anything but bleak. Seven distinct seasons, at lowest count, make it a constantly changing palette from intensely bright to moody and muted natural colourss. Accompanying the natural, the outport aesthetic prizes individual expression and ignoring rules resulting in the riot of colour in houses, boats, quilts, and furniture.

Fogo Island is a refreshing change from a flattened world of greige. Just like the landscape and magical light, our colours are hard to capture and interpret through a screen, so our advice is to see both in person.

Heritage Palette

The saltbox houses of Fogo Island can be painted a riot of colour with a kind of sociable anarchy that ignores rules and expresses the individuality of the designer-developer-owner-architect-builder-in one who lives within. The freedom from what was done as a rule is the essence of the Outport Aesthetic. The colourful character has a long history from muted natural materials, like ochre, mixed with natural oils to the painted finishes of recent history. Learn more about historical colours here.

All the Heritage Collection colours for the furniture designed for the Fogo Island Inn were pulled from local houses. While meant for that collection who would we be to stop you from embracing the Outport Aesthetic and putting them on anything you please?

FU Green

That stands for Fishermen's Union

Blue Danube

Profound blue

Summer Mist

Fresh as a summer morning

Exotic Red

From far away but found in Fogo Island

Gullwing Grey

This grey is definitely not flat on its feet

Snowfall White

Soft and pillowy it's warm and bright

Wrought Iron

A substanial brown/grey

Midnight Black

Perfect conditions for star gazing

Colours of Fogo Island

We asked renowned colourist Giulio Ridolfo to come for a residency that would try to capture the colours of Fogo Island. Described as "moving freely among flaneur and observer, artist, alchemist, and designer," he uses an embodied and idiosyncratic method to translate landscapes, objects, and emotions into colour.

Giulio hiked surveyed, observed, and absorbed the varying scenes on Fogo Island. Then, with found objects like a pebble, a maroon insect-eating pitcher plant, an old cast iron teapot, a wooden bowl of blueberries, he recreates the scenes in a collage of objects. One of Giulio's favourite sayings is: "you can't mix colour in theory." When he's satisfied that a collage is harmonious and true, he turns to science. With a spectrophotometer, he scans the still life's tones, translating them into exact numeric codes of the NHS colour system drawn from the DNA of cyan, yellow, magenta, and black/key (CYMK).

The Colours of Fogo Island below are the result of his thoughtful and tactile approach. Designed in coordination with the Premises Collection of furniture made for residential living, but we couldn’t object to use on any piece we make as that’s the Outport Aesthetics spirit.