Board Thread:Questions and Answers (Q&A)/@comment-27011067-20150923034325/@comment-6896023-20150923141853

Not sure about purple, but unidentified magic items have a blue layer over their icons on the inventory screen. Maybe your colour settings are making them look purple, because I can't think of what else it would be. As for unlocking their potential, you need to either give them to a party member with a high Lore rating, use the Identify spell or have them identified by a merchant or other NPC (such as priests in temples).