primitive color

Way back in 1928 — black-and-white films with sound had only barely begun to turn up in theaters — George Eastman demonstrated a primitive color home-movie camera, prompting a reporter for The New York Times, covering the unveiling, to get downright giddy about the future.

But sad color was not dismal and dull save in name; it was brown in tone, and brown is warm, and being a primitive color is, like many primitive things, cheerful.

The most pregnant evidence of the approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such idyllic tranquillity.

A carriage gateway in massive oak, barred with iron, and studded with large nail-heads, whose primitive color disappeared beneath a thick layer of mud, dust, and rust, fitted close into the arch of a deep recess, forming the swell of a bay window above.

Papering so much worn, torn and faded, that no one could recognize its primitive color, bedecked the walls.