Cinnabar
Retired2000-2010 · Color No. 102
Introducing Cinnabar, made by The Fiesta Tableware Company from 2000 to 2010. It's a warm and inviting shade of red, reminiscent of the rich tones of cinnabar mineral. Cinnabar adds a bold and luxurious touch to any tablescape. Mix and match Cinnabar with colors like White and Sunflower for a vibrant and festive table setting, or pair it with Slate and Plum for a sophisticated and elegant combination.
Production
Cinnabar was retired in 2010, so it is a hunt for secondhand pieces now. Fiesta Factory Direct is where the colors still being made are, if you are filling a set.
Shop Fiesta Factory Direct (opens in a new tab)Notes on Cinnabar
Cinnabar ran a decade, 2000 to 2010, and it's the darkest red Fiesta has made - deep enough that in low light it reads brown rather than red. It arrived alongside Juniper in 2000 and took over from the very short-lived Raspberry. That depth makes it behave unlike any other red in the line: it's an accent rather than a lead, and it works best against something pale. It sits close to Chocolate and Claret, both also retired, which makes a dark-toned Fiesta table surprisingly hard to build from current production alone.
Using Cinnabar on a table
Cinnabar has enough color to be noticed without taking over, which makes it a good second or third piece - a salad plate or a serving bowl rather than the whole setting. At L* 20 it is a genuinely dark plate, so pale food stands out on it and dark food disappears. It separates strongly from a white cloth (13.3:1) and less so from dark wood.
Below, 5 combinations built only from colors Fiesta has actually produced. Each says which rule it follows, and which pieces you can still buy today.
The pairing in its own description
Named in the descriptionThese colors are named alongside Cinnabar in this guide's description of it.
Buy these to go with it
Cinnabar was retired in 2010, but these are all in production now - the set you can actually finish buying.
Opposite on the wheel
Evergreen sits roughly opposite Cinnabar in hue, which is the highest-contrast pairing the palette offers. The neutrals keep it from shouting.
All red
Every color here is from the red family, arranged light to dark. A single-family table reads calm and deliberate rather than busy.
- Rose, 1951-1959
- Scarlet
-
Your color Cinnabar
Three-way split
Medium Green and Twilight sit about a third of the way around the color wheel from Cinnabar in each direction. Evenly spaced hues stay lively without any one taking over.
- White
- Medium Green
- Twilight
-
Your color Cinnabar
Where Cinnabar sits in the line
Cinnabar took over from Raspberry as Fiesta's red, and is noticeably darker than it - a clearly different glaze rather than a reformulation (ΔE 10.6). In 2000 it arrived alongside Juniper. What else happened in 2000 →
Closest colors in the palette
Ranked by CIEDE2000 (ΔE) against Cinnabar. Under about ΔE 5 two colors are hard to tell apart side by side - useful when you are identifying an unmarked piece.
On the table alongside Cinnabar
24 colors were in production at the same time. The 10 nearest in the timeline: