Anyone who plays guitar or bass has probably seen the amps made by Orange Music Electronic Company. They’re conspicuously orange.
Here is their logo, which looks like an archaic coat of arms; it features the British Union Jack flag; a red lion which I’m pretty sure I’ve also seen associated with British symbolism; and many other items whose meaning I don’t understand, though I’m sure there is a back-story behind them.
Orange is also the color associated with the Protestants of Northern Ireland. (It’s also associated with the Dutch, and with various places in America which were colonized by the Dutch.)
The combination of the color and the name orange, with the British flag and the red English lion, seems therefore to have some kind of political connotation. Or is this just a coincidence?
Orange is an English company, founded in London in the 1960s, but neither the colour nor the word have any political or cultural connotations for England. Englishness or English patriotism. In England, people would see its political connotations as connected with Irish unionism. It’s very unlikely that the founder of the business wished to evoke those political connotations; more likely he just thought that orange was a strong, eye-catching colour and that using the colour and naming the business after it would help build a strong brand identity.
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense that a major manufacturer of musical gear would want to kill their share of the Irish market by associating themselves with a political stance, but that crest looks so much like stuff I’ve seen painted all over buildings in Unionist areas in Northern Ireland (in Google Earth - I’ve never actually been there), that when combined with the name, it almost looks like the brand was deliberately created to appeal to Ulster Loyalists/Unionists. Without the crest, I would have assumed it was Dutch.
England/English was a hip, fashionable brand in the '60s, especially in the music/fashion world - think Carnaby Street, think the Beatles. So the Union flag, the red line, even the whole coat-of-arms thing as a trademark, are all intended to evoke Englishness.
The Orange colour, not so much. Not only is it not seen in England as suggesting Englishness but, back in the early '60s, before the Irish troubles really got going in the late '60s, most people in England would probably only have been barely aware even of it’s Irish political ramifications.
Sometimes a bright colour is just a bright colour.
Cliff Cooper is alive and speaks about why he called his amps Orange. Its because when he painted his home made amps, he chose orange for the colour
See
BTW, The UK has a famous Prince of Orange in its history. They deposed the Catholic King James II/VII who was installing catholics and interfering with the courts, and acting like he controlled parliament. Its also the last revolution and deposing in England. They installed William III (Dutch: Willem; 4 November 1650 – 8 March 1702),[2] also widely known as William of Orange, and at a time Prince of Orange, was sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672 and King of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702. In this context, Orange is a corrupted spelling of a place name that sounds like the modern word “orange”. The place existed first, at least in western european languges, and then the fruit from the arabic and earlier sanskrit word for it, and then fruit gave its name to the colour, and people got better at spelling (by having one official spelling.) and we spell the place “Orange” in english spelling.
Yes, that’s the “King Billy” who is celebrated by the Ulster Loyalists. There are a lot of paintings of him in Northern Ireland. William and Mary college (name dropped by Steely Dan in My Old School) is also named after him and his Queen.