Claret
Retired2016-2017 · Color No. 341
Introducing Claret, made by The Fiesta Tableware Company from 2016 to 2017. It's a rich and luxurious shade of red, reminiscent of the deep hue of claret wine. Claret adds a touch of elegance and sophistication to any tablescape. Mix and match Claret with colors like Ivory and Lemongrass for a refined and romantic table setting, or pair it with Plum and Poppy for a more dramatic and festive combination.
Production
Claret was retired in 2017, 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 Claret
Claret lasted one year - 2016 to 2017 - introduced for Fiesta's 80th anniversary and the company's 145th, then gone. That makes it genuinely scarce. It's a deep wine red with a lot of purple in it, dark enough that it sits closer to Heather than to any other red in the palette. It's one of the more sophisticated colors Fiesta has made and one of the least understood: it photographs badly, reading almost brown in poor light. If you're building a dark, moody table, Claret and Cinnabar together are hard to beat - but you'll be hunting for both.
Using Claret on a table
Claret 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* 23 it is a genuinely dark plate, so pale food stands out on it and dark food disappears. It separates strongly from a white cloth (12.0:1) 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 Claret in this guide's description of it.
- Ivory
- Lemongrass
- Poppy
-
Your color Claret
- Plum
Buy these to go with it
Claret was retired in 2017, but these are all in production now - the set you can actually finish buying.
Opposite on the wheel
Sea Mist Green sits roughly opposite Claret in hue, which is the highest-contrast pairing the palette offers. The neutrals keep it from shouting.
- White
- Sea Mist Green
-
Your color Claret
- Jade
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
- Red, 1936-1943
-
Your color Claret
Three-way split
Forest Green and Sapphire sit about a third of the way around the color wheel from Claret in each direction. Evenly spaced hues stay lively without any one taking over.
- White
- Sapphire
- Forest Green
-
Your color Claret
Where Claret sits in the line
Claret took over from Flamingo as Fiesta's red, and is darker and more muted than it - a complete change of direction rather than a reformulation (ΔE 37.3). It lasted 1 year where the median for its era is 7, which is why it turns up so rarely. In 2016 it arrived alongside Foundry and took the place of Paprika on the shelf. What else happened in 2016 →
Closest colors in the palette
Ranked by CIEDE2000 (ΔE) against Claret. 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 Claret
16 colors were in production at the same time. The 10 nearest in the timeline: