- ISBN13: 9780812971422
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors.
For example: Cleopatra used saffron—a source of the color yellow—for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects…. More >>
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I thoroughly enjoyed this reportage, where Victoria tracks down the origns of so many colours I knew from my childhood paintbox and later days with an aniline dyestuff manufacturer. However good the book is, and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in colourants and their origins, I was left wanting more……an upto date Part 2 please, to answer the questions that were left unanswered such as, “Is the lack of vivid bright orange just a reaction to the 60′ & 70′s overuse or is it still the case that cadmium orange (which does not get a mention) has not been replaced with anything quite as powerful? and what are the colours we now use in our paint boxes, wallpapers and so on?”
Why am I posing these questions, well Victoria is just the person to tell us auhtoritatively & accurately. I only had a few quibbles with the entire 400+ pages, one was an editor’s slip that allowed India to be separated into Bangladesh, India & Pakistan in 1947! Which I am sure the author knows was not quite the instant route it seems (first it was the eastern half of the division known as Pakistan i.e. East Pakistan which then separated in 1971 I believe from West Pakistan and became Bangladesh). Another was the rather simlplistic way she refers to chemical formulas, yes of course AsS is a combination of 1 molecule each of arsenic & sulphur whereas As2S3 combines in the ratio of 2:3, however whether this means in fact the latter is any more poisonous than the former can not be assumed from the chemical formula….if I remember my chemistry correctly you need to understand which is more soluble in water or most readily adsorbed in the stomach (a solution of HCl I believe). If the author has confirmed this it was not clear from the text and copiuous and excellent notes. Lead as usual gets a poor press, it would have been nice to see it labelled as harmless until compounds are airborne and/or actually disolved. Lastly I really enjoyed reading about FDA “enforced inks” (as in tattoo inks. In my days of permitted food & cosmetic colours the term was “FDA Approved”, however the process of approval and batch certification would no doubt be viewed as enforcement by many I suspect!
Please don’t let my minor quibbles spoil a interesting, unique and very accurate book which I found a delight to read and one I look forward to re-reading, somehting I hardly ever do – life is too short!
Hope this helps
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a joy of a book. Victoria Finlay has taken a subject that is very important, but seldom discussed – namely how did we get the colors used by artists for painting – and wove it into a personal account of her travels to find their sources. In the process she introduces the reader to all manner of exotic and little-known, but delightful facts, peoples and places. From cochineal (I might note here that as an entomologist I was somewhat discouraged by her apparent inability to decide whether to call the source a beetle or a bug- it is a BUG! – the one clinker in an otherwise well done book), through madder as a source of orange, saffron for yellow, and on to lapis lazuli for blue, etc. The book is (as noted) also a personal travel narrative with lots of side trips. I found these to be fascinating and to add interest to a book that might have been a dry compendium of facts about chemicals.
“Color: A Natural History of the Palette” is a good book to curl up with at night or to read on an airplane. The reader will find enough local “color” and interesting tidbits to make the hours very pleasant indeed. This is, I think, especially true of artists who may not know much about the colors they use in their work.
Rating: 5 / 5
In some ways, this little book is hard to explain. Finlay is an excellent writer and thus much of the book is her exotic travels to seek the source of exotic colors from around the world. However, she also explores the history of certain pigments, paints, dyes, and other products. She also gives very interesting details on the production of these pigments,some of which required considerable costs and effort. Finally she gives interesting information about the pigment or product itself, focusing on various chemical properties, such as whether or not it is a poison or is light fast.
I enjoyed her early chapters on the production of paint, ranging all the way from ancient Roman encaustic painting, the hand ground pigments of the Renaissance, and the birth of more standardized paint products during the Industrial revolution.
It is fitting that Finlay starts her discussion with ocre, the most common of the dirt colors, which has given us such a broad range of tones through the centuries.
In her chapters on Black and Brown, we learn the origins of charcoal, pencil, and ink drawing instruements. In her chapter on White, we learn the terrible history of lead poisoing for those who wore White Lead makeup. In the chapter on Red we learn all about the cochineal beetle, that eats cactus, and has brilliant red blood – the color often called Carmen. We learn of other reds, such as Rose Madder, made from rose petals. Oranges may come from various plant sources and show up in varnish. We hear of brilliant yellows from the urine of cows fed mango leaves, or brilliant but poisonous greens – one of which is suspected of poisoning Napoleon with arsnic infused wallpaper.
Finlay goes to Afganistan to seek lapis blue and has some interesting tales to tell about the Taliban. She ends with Indigo and Violet to complete the spectrum.
Interesting reading, relaxed and tangential at times, but well researched and factual; every studio art and art history student should read it.
Rating: 4 / 5
Since I am such a visual person and an aspiring globe trekker to boot, the idea of a book about color – not how to use it but how it has evolved over time and from sources often faraway – fascinates me. British journalist Victoria Finlay doesn’t let me down with her exhaustive, entertaining tome, as she explores the physical and historical makeup of colors, as well as the social and political meanings that different hues have come to represent. While I realize color has taken on certain significance in other cultures, what Finlay does here in a most compelling and conveniently consolidated fashion is open my eyes to how inextricably connected color is to people and that they value. Chapters are broken down by color – ocher, black, brown, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – and each has a vivid history beyond what stimulates the eye, even through its symbolism causing death.
The author has literally traveled the world to find these connections and unearth their histories, and she has come up with a treasure trove of stories and anecdotes that will make you look twice at colors you have taken for granted, even explaining common color-oriented imagery we use every day. For example, Finlay shares with us that bureaucratic “red tape” literally comes from ribbons dipped in a safflower-red dye that were used to tie bundles of legal documents in England. She is also quite the adventurer, as her travels took her to Afghanistan to the Sar-e-Sang mine three days after the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar fell in 2002. Prized by Osama bin Laden, the purest blue lapis on earth comes from this area, and ground to powder and mixed with oils, it renders the perfect azure of the sea, the Virgin Mary’s robes, or heaven. Finlay can come across as quite the renaissance person, as she shows why red ocher is sacred among Australian Aborigines, then jumps quickly over to Renaissance Italy to muse on the unique blood-orange varnish that Stradivarius used to anoint his violins.
Some facts she presents are just interesting trivia – that carmine is made from the blood of cochineal beetles harvested on plantations in Chile, and today used as an additive in cosmetics, soft drinks, paint and many other products; or that the remains of Egyptian mummies produced a brown pigment called appropriately mommia, or “mummy” back in the 19th century but now has been superseded by what can be extracted by a lump of coal tar. But toward the end of the book, Finlay is understandably melancholy when she visits “Color King” Lawrence Herbert, whose New Jersey company, the well-known art-supply standby Pantone, has catalogued more than 15,000 shades of basic colors. But Herbert reveals sadly he’s in the process of replacing his vivid color descriptions like barn red and sulphur spring with a generic, functional numbering system. The transition does indeed take the life out of the colors, but at least through Finlay’s comprehensive study, the reader will discover stories of corruption and murder commensurate with any Shakespeare play and hopefully reawaken to their possibilities.
Rating: 4 / 5
The materials of art class I took at Berkley in the 60′s, (Was the professor named Weber?), started a fascination with colors for me. I think that Findlay’s book might do the same for others. It is both scholarly, and well written. She follows the trail of ultramarine blue by driving and hiking through warring Afghanistan to the mines high in the wild hills, and Tyrian purple from Tyre, around the Mediterranean to Mexico to England to find how sea snails can create two glorious purples. “Color” reads like a travelogue.
2 suggestions for later editions:
1. More color plates
2.The footnotes should have been at the foot of each page to make it easier for us to enjoy them in context.
Rating: 5 / 5