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Color: A Natural History of the Palette
In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself.
How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood wear Lincoln green? In Color , Finlay explores the physical materials that color our world, such as precious minerals and insect blood, as well as the social and political meanings that color has carried through time.
Roman emperors used to wear togas dyed with a purple color that was made from an odorous Lebanese shellfish–which probably meant their scent preceded them. In the eighteenth century, black dye was called logwood and grew along the Spanish Main. Some of the first indigo plantations were started in America, amazingly enough, by a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza. And the popular van Gogh painting White Roses at Washington’s National Gallery had to be renamed after a researcher discovered that the flowers were originally done in a pink paint that had faded nearly a century ago. Color is full of extraordinary people, events, and anecdotes–painted all the more dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style.
Embark upon a thrilling adventure with this intrepid journalist as she travels on a donkey along ancient silk trade routes; with the Phoenicians sailing the Mediterranean in search of a special purple shell that garners wealth, sustenance, and prestige; with modern Chilean farmers breeding and bleeding insects for their viscous red blood. The colors that craft our world have never looked so bright.
How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood wear Lincoln green? In Color , Finlay explores the physical materials that color our world, such as precious minerals and insect blood, as well as the social and political meanings that color has carried through time.
Roman emperors used to wear togas dyed with a purple color that was made from an odorous Lebanese shellfish–which probably meant their scent preceded them. In the eighteenth century, black dye was called logwood and grew along the Spanish Main. Some of the first indigo plantations were started in America, amazingly enough, by a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza. And the popular van Gogh painting White Roses at Washington’s National Gallery had to be renamed after a researcher discovered that the flowers were originally done in a pink paint that had faded nearly a century ago. Color is full of extraordinary people, events, and anecdotes–painted all the more dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style.
Embark upon a thrilling adventure with this intrepid journalist as she travels on a donkey along ancient silk trade routes; with the Phoenicians sailing the Mediterranean in search of a special purple shell that garners wealth, sustenance, and prestige; with modern Chilean farmers breeding and bleeding insects for their viscous red blood. The colors that craft our world have never looked so bright.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Victoria Finlay
12 books249 followersVictoria Finlay is a writer and journalist, known for her books on colour and jewels. Her most famous book is Colour: Travels Through The Paint Box.
(from Wikipedia)
I studied Social Anthropology at St Andrews University, Scotland and William & Mary College, Virginia, after spending time in Himalayan India, teaching in a Tibetan refugee camp and realising how amazing it was to learn about different cultures. My first job was as a management trainee with Reuters, in London and Scandinavia, but I had a dream to be a real news journalist, writing about people’s lives at times of drama and trauma. So I left to study journalism for a three month diploma at the London College of Printing.
When I was there, being told just how hard it would be to find a job, a fellow student asked me where, if I could choose any newspaper or magazine in the world, I would most like to work. I still remember the street we were walking along in south London, as my answer, quite unplanned, would change my life. I said: “Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, during the Handover”. At that time I had neither visited Hong Kong nor ever read The South China Morning Post. However, I had spoken my wish, so I applied as an intern, and spent the next 12 years in Hong Kong writing for The Hong Kong Standard, RTHK (briefly) and finally The South China Morning Post, as news reporter, then arts editor.
I left to fulfil another wish, which was to write a book about where colours came from – a subject that had interested me ever since I was eight years old and heard that we could no longer make the beautiful blue glass of Chartres Cathedral. Two years later, in 2002, that was published as Colour, Travels through the Paintbox, by Sceptre (and Color: the Natural History of the Palette, by Ballantine in the US). My second book, Jewels: A Secret History, followed in 2004. Since then I have returned to the UK, got married (the two were connected), and have spent the past few years working on development programmes (another wish) with my husband, through his charity, ARC. And now I am venturing – very, very slowly – into the world of fiction-writing. In April 2014 my first published short story was published in a book called The Stories of the Stranger: a reimagining of some of the stories that just about every religion and community has, about looking after people you don’t know. In 2014 my book The Brilliant History of Color in Art was published by Getty Publications in LA, and was named the Huffington Post’s top art book for that year.
One of the surprising things that writing the books led me to was being invited onto the BBC Radio 4 programme The Museum of Curiosities a couple of years ago. On the pilot I talked about purple, and then in the first series I was asked to propose Pliny the Elder (I have a thing about Pliny the Elder) to be one of the first entries into the Museum of Curiosity. I give lots of talks, and write for several publications including Orion, Apollo, The Independent, The Smithsonian Magazine and The South China Morning Post.
(from Wikipedia)
I studied Social Anthropology at St Andrews University, Scotland and William & Mary College, Virginia, after spending time in Himalayan India, teaching in a Tibetan refugee camp and realising how amazing it was to learn about different cultures. My first job was as a management trainee with Reuters, in London and Scandinavia, but I had a dream to be a real news journalist, writing about people’s lives at times of drama and trauma. So I left to study journalism for a three month diploma at the London College of Printing.
When I was there, being told just how hard it would be to find a job, a fellow student asked me where, if I could choose any newspaper or magazine in the world, I would most like to work. I still remember the street we were walking along in south London, as my answer, quite unplanned, would change my life. I said: “Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, during the Handover”. At that time I had neither visited Hong Kong nor ever read The South China Morning Post. However, I had spoken my wish, so I applied as an intern, and spent the next 12 years in Hong Kong writing for The Hong Kong Standard, RTHK (briefly) and finally The South China Morning Post, as news reporter, then arts editor.
I left to fulfil another wish, which was to write a book about where colours came from – a subject that had interested me ever since I was eight years old and heard that we could no longer make the beautiful blue glass of Chartres Cathedral. Two years later, in 2002, that was published as Colour, Travels through the Paintbox, by Sceptre (and Color: the Natural History of the Palette, by Ballantine in the US). My second book, Jewels: A Secret History, followed in 2004. Since then I have returned to the UK, got married (the two were connected), and have spent the past few years working on development programmes (another wish) with my husband, through his charity, ARC. And now I am venturing – very, very slowly – into the world of fiction-writing. In April 2014 my first published short story was published in a book called The Stories of the Stranger: a reimagining of some of the stories that just about every religion and community has, about looking after people you don’t know. In 2014 my book The Brilliant History of Color in Art was published by Getty Publications in LA, and was named the Huffington Post’s top art book for that year.
One of the surprising things that writing the books led me to was being invited onto the BBC Radio 4 programme The Museum of Curiosities a couple of years ago. On the pilot I talked about purple, and then in the first series I was asked to propose Pliny the Elder (I have a thing about Pliny the Elder) to be one of the first entries into the Museum of Curiosity. I give lots of talks, and write for several publications including Orion, Apollo, The Independent, The Smithsonian Magazine and The South China Morning Post.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 833 reviews
June 6, 2020
This is one of those books where you walk into a room, finger on page, and yell ‘Did you know that Cherry Coke is full of dead insects!?’ at someone chopping onions, before ambling away again. It is a very charming and anecdotal book, in which Victoria Finlay racks up the air-miles trying to research the history of paints and dyes and colourings from across the spectrum.
It is, as she points out, quite strange to think that electromagnetic waves can have a frequency ranging from radiowaves (which sometimes have more than ten kilometres between them) to cosmic waves (which can be less than a billionth of a millimetre); and yet humans can only detect a tiny span of this phenomenon, specifically wavelengths between 0.00038 and 0.00075 millimetres. This minuscule range of electromagnetism gives us all the colours of the rainbow – which makes you wonder how dazzling the world looks to other animals with different senses.
If you approach this book looking for hard science or indeed careful history, you might be disappointed. Finlay's mode is excitable curiosity (sometimes buttressed by flights of speculation: ‘this might have meant’, ‘I like to think that…’), not sober authority. The best way to read it is as a personal travelogue, and indeed the book works best, perhaps, as travel literature. She somehow managed to get into Afghanistan (the source of almost all the world's ultramarine) in 2000 and 2001, and her descriptions of these journeys are astutely observed and very real: you get an impression of her as a good traveller and a good journalist, which is slightly lost in sections dominated by her historical research.
Nevertheless, as a broad introduction to the subject, it's hard to imagine anyone could read this without learning something new and bizarre in Finlay's explorations of urinating cows, Mexican sea snails, Indian weeds, Afghan miners, Aboriginal Dreaming and eighteenth-century art. Her bibliography is packed with more detailed further reading, and she herself is full of enthusiasm and overall great company.
It is, as she points out, quite strange to think that electromagnetic waves can have a frequency ranging from radiowaves (which sometimes have more than ten kilometres between them) to cosmic waves (which can be less than a billionth of a millimetre); and yet humans can only detect a tiny span of this phenomenon, specifically wavelengths between 0.00038 and 0.00075 millimetres. This minuscule range of electromagnetism gives us all the colours of the rainbow – which makes you wonder how dazzling the world looks to other animals with different senses.
If you approach this book looking for hard science or indeed careful history, you might be disappointed. Finlay's mode is excitable curiosity (sometimes buttressed by flights of speculation: ‘this might have meant’, ‘I like to think that…’), not sober authority. The best way to read it is as a personal travelogue, and indeed the book works best, perhaps, as travel literature. She somehow managed to get into Afghanistan (the source of almost all the world's ultramarine) in 2000 and 2001, and her descriptions of these journeys are astutely observed and very real: you get an impression of her as a good traveller and a good journalist, which is slightly lost in sections dominated by her historical research.
Nevertheless, as a broad introduction to the subject, it's hard to imagine anyone could read this without learning something new and bizarre in Finlay's explorations of urinating cows, Mexican sea snails, Indian weeds, Afghan miners, Aboriginal Dreaming and eighteenth-century art. Her bibliography is packed with more detailed further reading, and she herself is full of enthusiasm and overall great company.
February 2, 2014
The disclaimers "I imagine", "perhaps", "possibly", "it could be that" appear in this NON-FICTION book far more times than they should.
While I liked the content of about three-quarters of the book, it infuriated me at times when the author would suddenly start presenting the material through the eyes of a character, "imagining" their experiences, travels, and accomplishments. This first rears its head around page 81, when the tone of her book changes to speculate about an imaginary Corinthian artist. I quote...
"But what if she became tired of using just one variety of paint material? Perhaps, I thought, she may have tried out new blacks and browns. Would she, given the chance to try out charcoal's successors, have preferred lead pencils or India ink? Would she have dyed her clothes deepest black, or was it only in the palest of classical robes that she wanted to be seen? And if her boyfriend ever returned to Greece between voyages, would she have used her new knowledge of pigments to decorate her own face for the occasion? I imagined our heroine experimenting idly with mascaras and liners."
At this point, I threw the book across the room.
WHAT THE HELL. It's mean to be a scholarly book about color... and I'm reading a bullshit paragraph leading me into speculation about "this Corinthian woman's" dating and make-up?
I felt the same way about her handling of the character of Martinengo in the "Orange" chapter. On one two page spread, I think I counted "I imagine", "perhaps", "possibly", "if", about ten or twelve times.
This is an irresponsibly stupid way to write nonfiction. Two stars (and I never want to read anything else by her).
While I liked the content of about three-quarters of the book, it infuriated me at times when the author would suddenly start presenting the material through the eyes of a character, "imagining" their experiences, travels, and accomplishments. This first rears its head around page 81, when the tone of her book changes to speculate about an imaginary Corinthian artist. I quote...
"But what if she became tired of using just one variety of paint material? Perhaps, I thought, she may have tried out new blacks and browns. Would she, given the chance to try out charcoal's successors, have preferred lead pencils or India ink? Would she have dyed her clothes deepest black, or was it only in the palest of classical robes that she wanted to be seen? And if her boyfriend ever returned to Greece between voyages, would she have used her new knowledge of pigments to decorate her own face for the occasion? I imagined our heroine experimenting idly with mascaras and liners."
At this point, I threw the book across the room.
WHAT THE HELL. It's mean to be a scholarly book about color... and I'm reading a bullshit paragraph leading me into speculation about "this Corinthian woman's" dating and make-up?
I felt the same way about her handling of the character of Martinengo in the "Orange" chapter. On one two page spread, I think I counted "I imagine", "perhaps", "possibly", "if", about ten or twelve times.
This is an irresponsibly stupid way to write nonfiction. Two stars (and I never want to read anything else by her).
March 23, 2023
Having previously read Victoria Finlay's Buried Treasure: Travels Through The Jewellery Box, and enjoying that a lot, I was looking forward to what I expected to be a similar book on colour. This was no disappointment.
Finlay pulls together a book about colour - primarily dyes, paints & pigments - arranged in chapters of colour (Ochre, Black & Brown, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) and within each skips about a bit with some travel, some history, some science (lite), some modern usage etc, but all focussed around that colour.
Other readers were put off that the travel aspects, or the non-scientific content, or the sometimes biographic content, but for me I was fine with the balance. I suspect without aspects of all these it would be a more impersonal, scientific book which would likely interest me less.
Prussian blue, ultramarine, cadmium red, Indian yellow, malachite green, cobalt,burnt sienna, Chartres blue Flemish white and cochineal red... for me these all conjure up mystical, old world colours I know almost nothing about, although the names are familiar enough. Finlay researches historic documentation, explores, visiting locations where possible, talks to people. She covers a lot of ground (my shelves are the country list of where she visited), went to a bunch of interesting places. She references artists, artworks, takes note from historic forgers, talks to modern artists using historic materials. She explores the many paints and pigments that are dangerous (poisonous or carcinogenic) and those that were secret or 'lost' and talks to people who have rediscovered those secrets.
Wile the book runs to almost 500 pages (although around 100 are bibliography, notes & index), it could probably have been 50-75 pages shorter by the I was finished. After Ochre, Black & white and working through Roy G. Biv, I felt violet was a bit of a drag...
If sort-of-science, anecdotes, travels and exploration, research and history all mixed up peak your interest, then I would recommend both this and Buried Treasure (in fact, I liked Buried Treasure a little more).
4 stars
Finlay pulls together a book about colour - primarily dyes, paints & pigments - arranged in chapters of colour (Ochre, Black & Brown, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) and within each skips about a bit with some travel, some history, some science (lite), some modern usage etc, but all focussed around that colour.
Other readers were put off that the travel aspects, or the non-scientific content, or the sometimes biographic content, but for me I was fine with the balance. I suspect without aspects of all these it would be a more impersonal, scientific book which would likely interest me less.
Prussian blue, ultramarine, cadmium red, Indian yellow, malachite green, cobalt,burnt sienna, Chartres blue Flemish white and cochineal red... for me these all conjure up mystical, old world colours I know almost nothing about, although the names are familiar enough. Finlay researches historic documentation, explores, visiting locations where possible, talks to people. She covers a lot of ground (my shelves are the country list of where she visited), went to a bunch of interesting places. She references artists, artworks, takes note from historic forgers, talks to modern artists using historic materials. She explores the many paints and pigments that are dangerous (poisonous or carcinogenic) and those that were secret or 'lost' and talks to people who have rediscovered those secrets.
Wile the book runs to almost 500 pages (although around 100 are bibliography, notes & index), it could probably have been 50-75 pages shorter by the I was finished. After Ochre, Black & white and working through Roy G. Biv, I felt violet was a bit of a drag...
If sort-of-science, anecdotes, travels and exploration, research and history all mixed up peak your interest, then I would recommend both this and Buried Treasure (in fact, I liked Buried Treasure a little more).
4 stars
June 10, 2024
You can approach colours in a thousand different ways: purely visual, of course, but also emotional, aesthetic, chemical, and so on. But behind the colours of objects and works of art there is also a whole material production process of pigments and dyes, and this is related to trade networks and often also cultivation processes. If this book by Victoria Finlay taught me anything, it is that the materials for making dyes were often based on a specific local economy, which in general was kept very shielded: the recipe for the production of certain dyes often remained a secret for generations, and the book is full of references to monopolies on raw materials for those pigments and paints that have been maintained for centuries. At the same time, this whole traditional craft was accompanied by an enormous network of trade, certainly of those raw materials. For example, I learned that materials such as malachite and others were at least as valuable and expensive as spices, and often followed the same trade routes: from China and the Middle East to Europe and later America. Or from the Middle East to China: with cobalt, for example, which was mainly mined in Persia, and exported to China where it became the secret ingredient for the beautiful Chinese porcelain.
And of course, it is all the more striking that when it comes to the production of synthetic paints and dyes, the reverse traffic routes suddenly arise. Because that chemical discovery, usually the petrochemical treatment of coal tar, was made in the West, in Europe and the United States, just after the middle of the 19th century. Finlay zooms in on this a little less, but it is clear that these synthetic paints pushed the old, traditional dyes out of the market, and therefore also destroyed the local economies based on them. It is a part of the "Great Divergence" process that usually remains underexposed. And it also underlines that the Western dominance chronologically should certainly not be situated too early.
Maybe Finlay's book is not a work of reference. At times it is too much of a travelogue, a search for the remote areas where the basic products for traditional dyes could be found. But it surely is worth the prize of a very interesting pioneering study.
And of course, it is all the more striking that when it comes to the production of synthetic paints and dyes, the reverse traffic routes suddenly arise. Because that chemical discovery, usually the petrochemical treatment of coal tar, was made in the West, in Europe and the United States, just after the middle of the 19th century. Finlay zooms in on this a little less, but it is clear that these synthetic paints pushed the old, traditional dyes out of the market, and therefore also destroyed the local economies based on them. It is a part of the "Great Divergence" process that usually remains underexposed. And it also underlines that the Western dominance chronologically should certainly not be situated too early.
Maybe Finlay's book is not a work of reference. At times it is too much of a travelogue, a search for the remote areas where the basic products for traditional dyes could be found. But it surely is worth the prize of a very interesting pioneering study.
May 12, 2020
I’m always on my guard when I start reading a "commodity history". In many cases this is an endless accumulation of facts and anecdotes, often unsystematic and - what is worse - without critical screening. I had bad experiences with Mark Kurlansky's books (especially the one about Salt, Salt: A World History). But this seems to me of a different kind. Obviously this is not a science book, and Finlay is the first to admit. All in all, this is a mixed alternation of scientific information, personal travel stories, anecdotes, and even historical fiction. I only have a problem with the latter, for example when she imagines how a Jew, a violin maker expelled from Spain, roams Europe in the late 15th century in search of orange-coloured varnish. But otherwise this book stands for a very pleasant and informative read with usually also the necessary critical sense.
Finlay opens up the wonderful world of colours to such an extent that from now on you can no longer look at the colour texture of objects with a blank mind: there is always a sometimes very surprising history behind it. “If you open up a box of paints, there are numerous such stories hidden inside it. They are stories of sacredness and profanity, of nostalgia and innovation, of secrecy and myth, of luxury and texture, of profit and loss, of fading and poison, of cruelty and greed, and of the determination of some people to let nothing stop them in the pursuit of beauty.”
Finlay focusses on traditional and artisanal dyes and fabrics: namely those that were extracted from pigments of plants, animals, minerals or ordinary soil, often after a very intensive process that also regularly involved rotting. It is a wonderful world of secret recipes, carefully shielded monopolies and sometimes intense trade over thousands of kilometres. Apparently, this whole machinery came to an end around the middle of the 19th century, quite suddenly, with the discovery of synthetic dyes, usually extracted from coal tar. They were so successful, and so much cheaper, that they almost wiped traditional paints off the map, in a way that many of the recipes just disappeared. They are now being rediscovered little by little, and that also Finlay zooms in on.
In short, this is a very informative book, which actually focuses more on dye than on colour, although the latter determines the content of the book, divided in about 10 defining colours. I have learned a lot from it. The only major flaw I see is the lack of illustrations, at least in the edition I had. There is a small colour section, but that is more than insufficient. To say it with a pun: this book really screams for colour!
Finlay opens up the wonderful world of colours to such an extent that from now on you can no longer look at the colour texture of objects with a blank mind: there is always a sometimes very surprising history behind it. “If you open up a box of paints, there are numerous such stories hidden inside it. They are stories of sacredness and profanity, of nostalgia and innovation, of secrecy and myth, of luxury and texture, of profit and loss, of fading and poison, of cruelty and greed, and of the determination of some people to let nothing stop them in the pursuit of beauty.”
Finlay focusses on traditional and artisanal dyes and fabrics: namely those that were extracted from pigments of plants, animals, minerals or ordinary soil, often after a very intensive process that also regularly involved rotting. It is a wonderful world of secret recipes, carefully shielded monopolies and sometimes intense trade over thousands of kilometres. Apparently, this whole machinery came to an end around the middle of the 19th century, quite suddenly, with the discovery of synthetic dyes, usually extracted from coal tar. They were so successful, and so much cheaper, that they almost wiped traditional paints off the map, in a way that many of the recipes just disappeared. They are now being rediscovered little by little, and that also Finlay zooms in on.
In short, this is a very informative book, which actually focuses more on dye than on colour, although the latter determines the content of the book, divided in about 10 defining colours. I have learned a lot from it. The only major flaw I see is the lack of illustrations, at least in the edition I had. There is a small colour section, but that is more than insufficient. To say it with a pun: this book really screams for colour!
May 25, 2008
Funny story with this book - got to page 112 and discovered that pages 113 to 146 were missing! Thankfully, Random House (publisher) came to the rescue and sent me a replacement copy. Until it came I was in suspense about how ladies used to poison themselves (by accident) with white cosmetics that were made from lead.
This book was interesting not only for the information about colors, but also for the author's travels. She went to great lengths to get to the source of some colors, and along the way educates the reader about old customs and cultures. Fascinating book that will fill your head with lots of information that will seem useless unless you appear on Jeopardy some day. It made me look at everything around me a little more attentively, though, really noticing the color (Is that blue, indigo or violet?) and thinking about where that color source may have been aquired.
This book was interesting not only for the information about colors, but also for the author's travels. She went to great lengths to get to the source of some colors, and along the way educates the reader about old customs and cultures. Fascinating book that will fill your head with lots of information that will seem useless unless you appear on Jeopardy some day. It made me look at everything around me a little more attentively, though, really noticing the color (Is that blue, indigo or violet?) and thinking about where that color source may have been aquired.
January 22, 2012
I remember when I was a child getting a box of paints in small tubes. I was fascinated by the names of the colours, words I had never heard of before - vermillion, magenta, aquamarine, cochineal, carmine. They might have been only shades of orange, purple, blue and red, but those exotic names gave those paints just a little more magic. Didn't do much for my art work, but never mind.
Victoria Finlay would appear to have had a similar early interest in colour when her father took her to Chartres Cathedral. She noticed the beauty of the stained glass window crafted some 800 years ago, only to be gob smacked when her father told her that no one actually knows how to make that beautiful blue in the window anymore. And so began her interest in discovering where colours come from and ultimately this book.
Part travelogue, part science text, part art history, part general history, the author has brought together a huge number and variety of facts and experiences and people into this rather large book of 440 pages, not including bibliography, notes and index which together run to another 60 pages! It could be very easy to have complete confusion in amalgamating all this material into a readable book. Probably the only way to do it with a subject such is colour is to organise it by colour. So she starts at the beginning with the colour of the earth - ochre - the first colour used for art and decoration. She goes to Australia, to an Aborigine community where ochre has been used continuously for 40,000 years. Imagine.
She then moves onto black and brown made from soot, coal, fish excretions, graphite rock, wasps, as well as giving us snippets about mummification and the history of printing. The next chapter, white, is mostly about lead which was used to make white paint, and especially make-up resulting in the early and painful deaths of many fashionable ladies. Following the colours of the rainbow, the next seven chapters take us all over the world. From cochineal bugs on cactus plants in Chile (red), to Stradivarius violins in Cremona (orange), to urine gathering in India and wars over saffron (yellow), to exploring caves in China (green), visiting the Bamiyan Buddhas not long before they were blown up (blue), harvesting indigo plants in India and Mexico (indigo) and going to Lebanon to search for the source of the power of purple in ancient Rome and Egypt (violet). And these are only a few of the stories that the author crams into her book.
If there is any criticism of the book it is perhaps that there is too much information, too many stories and adventures, making it hard to catagorise exactly what type of book it is. I would say, quite simply, it is a personal journey of a subject close to her heart that she wants to share with as many people as possible. It is an absolute treasure trove of action and inquiry and I learnt so much about all sorts of stuff! So glad I picked this book up from the shelf of a second hand book shop!
Victoria Finlay would appear to have had a similar early interest in colour when her father took her to Chartres Cathedral. She noticed the beauty of the stained glass window crafted some 800 years ago, only to be gob smacked when her father told her that no one actually knows how to make that beautiful blue in the window anymore. And so began her interest in discovering where colours come from and ultimately this book.
Part travelogue, part science text, part art history, part general history, the author has brought together a huge number and variety of facts and experiences and people into this rather large book of 440 pages, not including bibliography, notes and index which together run to another 60 pages! It could be very easy to have complete confusion in amalgamating all this material into a readable book. Probably the only way to do it with a subject such is colour is to organise it by colour. So she starts at the beginning with the colour of the earth - ochre - the first colour used for art and decoration. She goes to Australia, to an Aborigine community where ochre has been used continuously for 40,000 years. Imagine.
She then moves onto black and brown made from soot, coal, fish excretions, graphite rock, wasps, as well as giving us snippets about mummification and the history of printing. The next chapter, white, is mostly about lead which was used to make white paint, and especially make-up resulting in the early and painful deaths of many fashionable ladies. Following the colours of the rainbow, the next seven chapters take us all over the world. From cochineal bugs on cactus plants in Chile (red), to Stradivarius violins in Cremona (orange), to urine gathering in India and wars over saffron (yellow), to exploring caves in China (green), visiting the Bamiyan Buddhas not long before they were blown up (blue), harvesting indigo plants in India and Mexico (indigo) and going to Lebanon to search for the source of the power of purple in ancient Rome and Egypt (violet). And these are only a few of the stories that the author crams into her book.
If there is any criticism of the book it is perhaps that there is too much information, too many stories and adventures, making it hard to catagorise exactly what type of book it is. I would say, quite simply, it is a personal journey of a subject close to her heart that she wants to share with as many people as possible. It is an absolute treasure trove of action and inquiry and I learnt so much about all sorts of stuff! So glad I picked this book up from the shelf of a second hand book shop!
May 13, 2008
Having an affinity for all things color, I was attracted to the cover of Color: A Natural History of the Palette while visiting the Met one afternoon about a year ago. I bought it and have been reading it for the past year.
I'm sad to say that I found the cover to be the best part of this book. The book wasn't bad, but it also was nowhere near great. Finlay sets about the task of researching the origins of the pigments of the paintbox: Ochre, Black & Brown, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo & Violet. For each color, she researches the historical beginnings of the colors, specifically trying to illuminate why each color is named the way it is (eg, Tyrian Purple, Indian Yellow, etc.). She does this by trekking across the globe to the points of interest in hopes of discovering the histories (and, sometimes, secrets) of the colors from the indigenous people who, in some cases, still use the time-honored traditions.
In some regards this book elaborates upon colors. In some regards this book is a travelogue. In yet other regards this book is part imagination: when Finlay is unable to find hard and fast facts about her subject, she will often say, "I imagine [this to be true]..."
I think, if I could, I would rate this book 2.5 stars. It is mildly interesting but, perhaps, a bit too long.
I'm sad to say that I found the cover to be the best part of this book. The book wasn't bad, but it also was nowhere near great. Finlay sets about the task of researching the origins of the pigments of the paintbox: Ochre, Black & Brown, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo & Violet. For each color, she researches the historical beginnings of the colors, specifically trying to illuminate why each color is named the way it is (eg, Tyrian Purple, Indian Yellow, etc.). She does this by trekking across the globe to the points of interest in hopes of discovering the histories (and, sometimes, secrets) of the colors from the indigenous people who, in some cases, still use the time-honored traditions.
In some regards this book elaborates upon colors. In some regards this book is a travelogue. In yet other regards this book is part imagination: when Finlay is unable to find hard and fast facts about her subject, she will often say, "I imagine [this to be true]..."
I think, if I could, I would rate this book 2.5 stars. It is mildly interesting but, perhaps, a bit too long.
August 6, 2016
Oh, this book had so much promise! And yet, it fell flat...
I was expecting to read more of a history book, but it turned out to be a travelogue/memoir, and a tad too self-involved for my tastes. Moreover, the author does a lot of "imagining" for a work of non-fiction. Damn.
I was expecting to read more of a history book, but it turned out to be a travelogue/memoir, and a tad too self-involved for my tastes. Moreover, the author does a lot of "imagining" for a work of non-fiction. Damn.
October 11, 2009
LOVE me a book where I can pick a chapter and read up on what's been taunting my mind - thus I love anthologies and various other collections.
in Color, I found a fantastic historical recounting of the who/where/why/what of much of our commonly accepted color palette. And that alone means something, because there is a surprisingly low ratio of 'general citizens' who knows REALLY what color is about, how it's made, how we wrestled/negotiated/bullied our ways into being enjoyers/purveyors of it. Lot's of lessons to be learned....
in Color, I found a fantastic historical recounting of the who/where/why/what of much of our commonly accepted color palette. And that alone means something, because there is a surprisingly low ratio of 'general citizens' who knows REALLY what color is about, how it's made, how we wrestled/negotiated/bullied our ways into being enjoyers/purveyors of it. Lot's of lessons to be learned....
November 19, 2017
I’d call this a travelogue on the origin of pigments and dyes of each rainbow color, and, I believe, the only book to really tackle the history of color. This book had been on my radar a while, but I had decided not to read it, yet a class on color finally compelled me to read it. Through it I’ve come to appreciate just how complex getting pigment mix with a medium of the right consistency and translucency to stick to a surface and dry without fading or changing color over time or to dissolve in water to dye cloth, and again, to stick and not fade. At times the author’s hunt for colors, such as for ochre in Australia or violet in Tyre, that start with all the drama of quest for unknown secrets, fizzle because the secrets remain unknown in the end. The origin and history of each color is presented here is interesting but feels incomplete as I would prefer a more broad history rather than the in-depth travel stories presented which leaves me with mixed feelings about this book.
April 21, 2020
Overall, this was really interesting, though it did take a month to read. It saved the best colors for last - indigo, from the indigo plant, and violet, from sea snail tears!
There was an interesting balance, maybe unsuccessful, between the author trying to respect indigenous cultures or protected places, and finding the information anyways by reading books published in a less respectful time, or sneaking by guards. She also has a habit to claim things as “mine” - my pilgrims, my mines, my snails, etc - when they are obviously not hers at all.
Besides those small annoyances, it was really interesting learn about the different pigments or dyes, and the writing style made it much more readable than if it was more textbook, less travelogue. It seemed she reverted to travelogue style narration when she had less historical information to go on, which sometimes made those sections longer. There was also a scant amount of photographs included, and there was much google image searching while reading this book.
I recommend if you’re a fan of all things colorful, learning where the names on your paint tubes came from, or natural history.
There was an interesting balance, maybe unsuccessful, between the author trying to respect indigenous cultures or protected places, and finding the information anyways by reading books published in a less respectful time, or sneaking by guards. She also has a habit to claim things as “mine” - my pilgrims, my mines, my snails, etc - when they are obviously not hers at all.
Besides those small annoyances, it was really interesting learn about the different pigments or dyes, and the writing style made it much more readable than if it was more textbook, less travelogue. It seemed she reverted to travelogue style narration when she had less historical information to go on, which sometimes made those sections longer. There was also a scant amount of photographs included, and there was much google image searching while reading this book.
I recommend if you’re a fan of all things colorful, learning where the names on your paint tubes came from, or natural history.
November 21, 2007
In an impressive mix of history, science and travelogue. Ms. Finlay shares with her readers the results of her worldwide search for the pigments and dyes and that humankind has used over the ages. Each color (including black and white) is represented in a separate section, where she weaves stories of fictional and real-life people into her research with entertaining results.
From Australian sacred ochers to Phoenician royal purple; from Incan reds to Chinese imperial greens - this book literally covers a rainbow of topics. The narrative thread is spider-silk thin for most of the book, and occasionally the reader is overwhelmed with the amount of information presented; but the overarching theme of the discovery and use of color is carried well throughout.
Not only is this book accessible to the general reader, there is considerable scholarship in its pages. The bibliography covers 6 pages, with the notes section (broken down by chapter) another 13. She also includes a list of illustrations, credits and an index. I found myself filling a notecard with my comments, as well as noting some Further Reading references.
Recommended to anyone with an interest in the artistic side of history and science.
Notes On Colors
From Australian sacred ochers to Phoenician royal purple; from Incan reds to Chinese imperial greens - this book literally covers a rainbow of topics. The narrative thread is spider-silk thin for most of the book, and occasionally the reader is overwhelmed with the amount of information presented; but the overarching theme of the discovery and use of color is carried well throughout.
Not only is this book accessible to the general reader, there is considerable scholarship in its pages. The bibliography covers 6 pages, with the notes section (broken down by chapter) another 13. She also includes a list of illustrations, credits and an index. I found myself filling a notecard with my comments, as well as noting some Further Reading references.
Recommended to anyone with an interest in the artistic side of history and science.
Notes On Colors
October 22, 2008
This was an enjoyable book to read, but ultimately more of a travel book than a book about color. The adventures of the author tend to be given rather more weight than the subject.
November 27, 2021
Kiwi flora says much of what I want to say: link here.
Instead of paints, I have used Prismacolor art pencils. They have some of the same old names:
Ochre Yellow
Sienna Brown
Prussian Blue now renamed Midnight Blue
Salmon no longer named Dead Salmon
Now Pantone has taken the lead in making colors and naming colors of color, dye, and paint industries that now my coloring pencils have fewer names and more computers friendly numbers.
Names are powerful bits of the universe, something that not just the Divine uses to call things into creations but all agents if the Divine use to call into co-creation. But that is an issue I have with Pantone and not the book. . . .
Instead of paints, I have used Prismacolor art pencils. They have some of the same old names:
Ochre Yellow
Sienna Brown
Prussian Blue now renamed Midnight Blue
Salmon no longer named Dead Salmon
Now Pantone has taken the lead in making colors and naming colors of color, dye, and paint industries that now my coloring pencils have fewer names and more computers friendly numbers.
Names are powerful bits of the universe, something that not just the Divine uses to call things into creations but all agents if the Divine use to call into co-creation. But that is an issue I have with Pantone and not the book. . . .
March 31, 2015
This book too me an inordinate amount of time to get through. And although I'm not primarily a nonfiction reader, this time it had nothing to do with the book itself or really nothing to do with the quality of the book. The quality was awesome. Finlay's writing was engaging and humorous and her journeys around the world to some of the most random and strange in an out of the way sort of places to discover the history of color were enlightening, educating and very entertaining. The reason it took me so long to get through the book is because it's just crammed with information, variety of information, from historical to cultural, that it takes a brain some time to process. Color is something that surrounds us on daily basis and yet receives barely a thought outside of matching, but after reading this book you won't look at it the same way again. In a way this was like taking a terrific class, because learning should optimally change the way we see the world. Interesting, clever, endlessly fascinating, this was a great read. Highly recommended.
Want to read
January 18, 2016Doesn't this look cool? JG is into it. She says it's a fun and engaging read.
October 10, 2012
I've always been fascinated about the origins of colour, and in Color - A Natural History of the Palette, author Victoria Finlay travels the world in her search for the origin and birthplace of colors and dyes.
I wasn't interested in the author's personal travelogue, so I initially had the intention of skipping over any boring parts and jumping straight to the facts about the colours which are conveniently broken down into the following chapter headings:
1. Ochre
2. Black and Brown
3. White
4. Red
5. Orange
6. Yellow
7. Green
8. Blue
9. Indigo
10. Violet
What I found surprising was that there were no boring bits! Finlay has managed to keep herself out of the book for the most part, and the stories that were included were historically relevant to the colour being discussed and I didn't end up skipping a single paragraph.
Finlay's passion for color and dyes are clear early on, but far from boring the reader her enthusiasm is infectious and I found myself becoming quite excited when she found her first indigo plant or saw a purple field of saffron crocus (used for the color yellow) for the first time.
Some of my favourite facts include:
- Red was made from the blood of the Cochineal insect, which lives on a cactus leaf
- The colour yellow was made from saffron, harvested from the saffron crocus flower, however only 3 strands of saffron are collected from each flower.
- In 1775, arsenic was used to create a color called Scheele's Green. It took until 1880 for people to realise that the wallpapers and paints using this green (and other paints containing arsenic) were killing people and making others very sick. e.g. a cat had become covered with pustules after being locked in a green room.
- Purple is the colour that has been most legislated about over the longest time in history.
- Purple has been a regal colour for centuries and one form of purple was made from shellfish and worn by emperors of Ancient Rome. Finlay writes that those who wore it "probably left a cloud of garlicky, fishy smells in their wake," and that perhaps it was the "scent of power" at the time. What a thought!
I learned so much about the history of colour, dyes, art, art forgery, culture, events in history and trade across many countries and different time periods in the world's history. Everything from a secret green used on ancient Chinese porcelain to the colour blue used to dye English police uniforms in the 1960s was covered, all of which I found fascinating and easy to digest in Finlay's conversational writing style.
I thoroughly recommend Color - A Natural History of the Palette to readers who enjoy art, culture, history, non fiction and have a natural curiosity about the colours around us; great for trivia nights too!
I wasn't interested in the author's personal travelogue, so I initially had the intention of skipping over any boring parts and jumping straight to the facts about the colours which are conveniently broken down into the following chapter headings:
1. Ochre
2. Black and Brown
3. White
4. Red
5. Orange
6. Yellow
7. Green
8. Blue
9. Indigo
10. Violet
What I found surprising was that there were no boring bits! Finlay has managed to keep herself out of the book for the most part, and the stories that were included were historically relevant to the colour being discussed and I didn't end up skipping a single paragraph.
Finlay's passion for color and dyes are clear early on, but far from boring the reader her enthusiasm is infectious and I found myself becoming quite excited when she found her first indigo plant or saw a purple field of saffron crocus (used for the color yellow) for the first time.
Some of my favourite facts include:
- Red was made from the blood of the Cochineal insect, which lives on a cactus leaf
- The colour yellow was made from saffron, harvested from the saffron crocus flower, however only 3 strands of saffron are collected from each flower.
- In 1775, arsenic was used to create a color called Scheele's Green. It took until 1880 for people to realise that the wallpapers and paints using this green (and other paints containing arsenic) were killing people and making others very sick. e.g. a cat had become covered with pustules after being locked in a green room.
- Purple is the colour that has been most legislated about over the longest time in history.
- Purple has been a regal colour for centuries and one form of purple was made from shellfish and worn by emperors of Ancient Rome. Finlay writes that those who wore it "probably left a cloud of garlicky, fishy smells in their wake," and that perhaps it was the "scent of power" at the time. What a thought!
I learned so much about the history of colour, dyes, art, art forgery, culture, events in history and trade across many countries and different time periods in the world's history. Everything from a secret green used on ancient Chinese porcelain to the colour blue used to dye English police uniforms in the 1960s was covered, all of which I found fascinating and easy to digest in Finlay's conversational writing style.
I thoroughly recommend Color - A Natural History of the Palette to readers who enjoy art, culture, history, non fiction and have a natural curiosity about the colours around us; great for trivia nights too!
May 4, 2014
This is an impressive book with an innocuous title. The folio edition is as you would expect impressively bound and comes with its own box sleeve. However the contents are the same as the other editions just in a more impressive binding (I was lucky to pick this us second hand, there is no way I could afford such a book brand new ) the book after a short introduction to colours how they were incentivised and discovered then breaks up in to a number of chapters ingeniously named after a specific colour. These chapters cover a colour, it's source and in some cases discovery and where it was used. In many cases it can be seen that not only socially where these colour important but also financially and politically. As a result the book fires off ideas and other erasing suggestions all over the place to looking up the impressionist painters to discovering archeological cave paintings. The book is a fascinating read which I will admit I would not have normally gone for but I am very pleased I did (and on a side note any folio book is worth owning purely for the quality and sheer beauty of the binding )
June 30, 2012
Be seduced by the history of pigments. Basically about the author's travels while seeking out the origins of ancient colours. I loved this and gladdened by the extensive notes and bibliography.
November 13, 2023
4.5 rounded up.
This book took nearly 7 months to read. It wasn't that the book was boring... it was more like the structure held me back. The prose was well written, but the chapters were long and meandering. It's primarily a travel memoir arranged by colors in an artists palette rather than chronologically with bits of history and science mixed into descriptions of modern visits to museums and conversations with fascinating people. I found myself not wanting to start a new chapter unless I had time to finish. The anecdotes are memorable (even if I don't believe the part about finding the tiny piece of ochre). I enjoyed the part linking Michaelangelo to Afghanistan. It was entertaining. The book jumps from Australian First Nations art to Mount Vernon. Did Caesar smell funny? Why are pencils yellow? There are accounts of artwork that faded over time interspersed with techniques to produce the materials being discussed.
It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I'll probably end up buying it.
This book took nearly 7 months to read. It wasn't that the book was boring... it was more like the structure held me back. The prose was well written, but the chapters were long and meandering. It's primarily a travel memoir arranged by colors in an artists palette rather than chronologically with bits of history and science mixed into descriptions of modern visits to museums and conversations with fascinating people. I found myself not wanting to start a new chapter unless I had time to finish. The anecdotes are memorable (even if I don't believe the part about finding the tiny piece of ochre). I enjoyed the part linking Michaelangelo to Afghanistan. It was entertaining. The book jumps from Australian First Nations art to Mount Vernon. Did Caesar smell funny? Why are pencils yellow? There are accounts of artwork that faded over time interspersed with techniques to produce the materials being discussed.
It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I'll probably end up buying it.
April 15, 2017
I really liked this book, and I checked it out from the library but I'm going to buy it. I didn't mind the format or the fact that she spoke about her modern-day expeditions for the colors.
According to the Torah, Gold told Moses to tell the Israelites to make "fringes on the borders of their garments and put upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue." The Talmud went farther to specify that the blue had to come from a sea creature that had a shell. The tsitsit shawl and fringe remind Jewish men of their responsibilities. The process to create this blue has been lost and rediscovered, many times over. between 1913 and 1980, all experiments done revealed purple, not blue, and usually involved the wrong sea creature.
Then in 1980 an chemist called Otto Elsner who experimented with woad dyes noticed something extraordinary, that dying on a sunny day came out blue, while on cloudy days it was purple. This however did not solve the problem of how the Ancients made the pigment into a dye. "The Israelites sent him a vial of pigment from Murex trunculus and some wool. He was excited by the opportunity to test his theory that if Tyrian purple contains indigo, then perhaps, like woad and indigo, it needs to have the oxygen removed from the vat before it can become a dye. And what more convenient ingredient for achieving this than the rotting meat of the mollusk (which would cause the bacteria to putrefy and use up the oxygen)?" He added some pickled cockles, which are similar to the murex that had supplied the pigment, after he washed off the vinegar. His solution turned from purple to green, and "the first time he dipped a cloth into the liquor it turned purple. But later he found that if the dissolved greenish liquor was exposed to light, any cloth he put into it turned green and then - in the air - turned blue.
This process has the theological neatness of embracing something holy, born of light. and like the blue thread, was on the fringe of the garment and metaphorically on the fringe of what is allowed in Jewish traditions. The Tyrian blue is one of the least kosher colors; Shellfish are as anathema to Jews as pork.
and then here are some other little tidbits:
*the first artist was a Corinthian woman
*ochre is the oldest color, in all its variations
*pencils were painted yellow to imitate the Chinese Manchu robes
*Joseph Lovibond invented the first system to judge the quality of beer by comparing it against shades of brown stained glass
*after the 18th century, brown ink was made from sepia, the dark liquor secreted by cuttlefish when they are afraid
*Red was originally made from the blood of cochineal bugs, found on cacti
*In the production of red in the 17th century, alum was the agent that gave the dye its teeth. it's rumored that King Henry VIII of England only married Ann of Cleves to get his hands on her alum
*Turkish Miniatures were actually named after the orange that was prevalent
*Saffron is really tricky to harvest. The romantic Spanish do not grow very much and they deal with the mice by smoking them out, while in Iran, they are killed with motorcycle smoke
*Cleopatra used to take a saffron bath before inviting a man to her boudoir
*In China, green porcelain, or mi se, pronounced "mee-ser" was a big secret reserved for the wealthy and holy. it was admired for its unusual and rare beauty. the color would crackle slightly on the surface, making it perfectly imperfect
*Green wallpaper was made with arsenic, and might have led to the premature death of Napolean at St. Helena
*Green cloth was a sign of wealth in Robin Hood's time, so the fact that his garb was green was another example of stealing from the rich to give to the poor
*Cennino's third green was often referred to as van Eyck green because he used it so well, especially in The Arnolfini Marriage. This painting may be an allegory to sexual abuse rather than a celebration of marital bliss
*Blue is made from Lapis Lazuli, which is a rock that contains speckles of iron pyrite, fool's gold, and is mined in Afghanistan
*John Herschel invented the "blueprint" in 1842
*woad was used to make Indigo dye in the time of England's Braveheart, and was used to paint the warriors. it was also an extraordinary astringent, so they were also setting up a primitive field hospital while they were bathing in vats of woad
*it was Newton that added orange and indigo to the spectrum. he decided there would be seven colors, because seven was a divine number. at the time there were only seven known planets, seven days of the week, seven musical notes. The Chinese use the number five; five elements, five tastes, five musical notes, and five colors: black, white, red, yellow and blue
*In Hindu India, blue is often a lucky color, the color of Krishna, the god who dances around the world making both love and fun
*As recently as 1952, Violet (or more like Mauve) was a color of mourning. when King George VI died in '52, "black and mauve knickers were solemnly placed in haberdashers' windows"
*Phoenicians from Lebanon arrived from the Arabian peninsula in the third millennium B.C. Their name derives from the Greed word for Purple, phoinis. They made violet from the shells of mollusks that live along their rocky coast
*Violet is made in Costa Rica by squeezing a shellfish until it barfs up the dye which reacts to air by first being a neon green, then yellow, and finally purple
According to the Torah, Gold told Moses to tell the Israelites to make "fringes on the borders of their garments and put upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue." The Talmud went farther to specify that the blue had to come from a sea creature that had a shell. The tsitsit shawl and fringe remind Jewish men of their responsibilities. The process to create this blue has been lost and rediscovered, many times over. between 1913 and 1980, all experiments done revealed purple, not blue, and usually involved the wrong sea creature.
Then in 1980 an chemist called Otto Elsner who experimented with woad dyes noticed something extraordinary, that dying on a sunny day came out blue, while on cloudy days it was purple. This however did not solve the problem of how the Ancients made the pigment into a dye. "The Israelites sent him a vial of pigment from Murex trunculus and some wool. He was excited by the opportunity to test his theory that if Tyrian purple contains indigo, then perhaps, like woad and indigo, it needs to have the oxygen removed from the vat before it can become a dye. And what more convenient ingredient for achieving this than the rotting meat of the mollusk (which would cause the bacteria to putrefy and use up the oxygen)?" He added some pickled cockles, which are similar to the murex that had supplied the pigment, after he washed off the vinegar. His solution turned from purple to green, and "the first time he dipped a cloth into the liquor it turned purple. But later he found that if the dissolved greenish liquor was exposed to light, any cloth he put into it turned green and then - in the air - turned blue.
This process has the theological neatness of embracing something holy, born of light. and like the blue thread, was on the fringe of the garment and metaphorically on the fringe of what is allowed in Jewish traditions. The Tyrian blue is one of the least kosher colors; Shellfish are as anathema to Jews as pork.
and then here are some other little tidbits:
*the first artist was a Corinthian woman
*ochre is the oldest color, in all its variations
*pencils were painted yellow to imitate the Chinese Manchu robes
*Joseph Lovibond invented the first system to judge the quality of beer by comparing it against shades of brown stained glass
*after the 18th century, brown ink was made from sepia, the dark liquor secreted by cuttlefish when they are afraid
*Red was originally made from the blood of cochineal bugs, found on cacti
*In the production of red in the 17th century, alum was the agent that gave the dye its teeth. it's rumored that King Henry VIII of England only married Ann of Cleves to get his hands on her alum
*Turkish Miniatures were actually named after the orange that was prevalent
*Saffron is really tricky to harvest. The romantic Spanish do not grow very much and they deal with the mice by smoking them out, while in Iran, they are killed with motorcycle smoke
*Cleopatra used to take a saffron bath before inviting a man to her boudoir
*In China, green porcelain, or mi se, pronounced "mee-ser" was a big secret reserved for the wealthy and holy. it was admired for its unusual and rare beauty. the color would crackle slightly on the surface, making it perfectly imperfect
*Green wallpaper was made with arsenic, and might have led to the premature death of Napolean at St. Helena
*Green cloth was a sign of wealth in Robin Hood's time, so the fact that his garb was green was another example of stealing from the rich to give to the poor
*Cennino's third green was often referred to as van Eyck green because he used it so well, especially in The Arnolfini Marriage. This painting may be an allegory to sexual abuse rather than a celebration of marital bliss
*Blue is made from Lapis Lazuli, which is a rock that contains speckles of iron pyrite, fool's gold, and is mined in Afghanistan
*John Herschel invented the "blueprint" in 1842
*woad was used to make Indigo dye in the time of England's Braveheart, and was used to paint the warriors. it was also an extraordinary astringent, so they were also setting up a primitive field hospital while they were bathing in vats of woad
*it was Newton that added orange and indigo to the spectrum. he decided there would be seven colors, because seven was a divine number. at the time there were only seven known planets, seven days of the week, seven musical notes. The Chinese use the number five; five elements, five tastes, five musical notes, and five colors: black, white, red, yellow and blue
*In Hindu India, blue is often a lucky color, the color of Krishna, the god who dances around the world making both love and fun
*As recently as 1952, Violet (or more like Mauve) was a color of mourning. when King George VI died in '52, "black and mauve knickers were solemnly placed in haberdashers' windows"
*Phoenicians from Lebanon arrived from the Arabian peninsula in the third millennium B.C. Their name derives from the Greed word for Purple, phoinis. They made violet from the shells of mollusks that live along their rocky coast
*Violet is made in Costa Rica by squeezing a shellfish until it barfs up the dye which reacts to air by first being a neon green, then yellow, and finally purple
December 19, 2022
This book's strength is not where you think it is. The material is fascinating enough, but it's the delightful telling of the author's adventures exploring the globe for pigments that makes it a 5 star book. Finlay explores some very challenging places - she even goes into caves & mines, which is my personal nightmare, so kudos to her.
May 31, 2012
I love color. I've often said that I get the same pleasure out of looking at color that my friends seem to get from listening to music. It's a visceral feeling of joy that I can't describe particularly well with words. Also, since I'm a painter, this book has all the makings of a seven star review. Yet you notice it's only four stars, what gives?
Okay here's the deal. When the subtitle of your book is "A Natural History of the Palette," that implies history, as in truth (or the best we can make of it). Non-fiction. For the most part this is how the book is written, there are great stories about pigments and their origins, HOWEVER, there are several dozen little bits snuck into the text that all start, "I like to imagine that..." Well, guess what lady, I don't want to know about how you IMAGINE historical events to have played out. It's often not clear when we emerge back from imagination-land and back into facts, so now my brain is mishmashing true things with what Victoria Finlay wishes were true. As a somewhat sidenote, this is what I don't like about historical fiction, it generally results in me at a party disclosing some mindboggling facts about something I read, only to realize later when my ass (or brain, rather) is being handed to me on a plate, that it's not true and I had conflated the "historical" with the "fiction".
All in all, I still would recommend this book to people who are interested in this topic, I just wish it never strayed from the already interesting stories about the origin of pigments/dyes.
Okay here's the deal. When the subtitle of your book is "A Natural History of the Palette," that implies history, as in truth (or the best we can make of it). Non-fiction. For the most part this is how the book is written, there are great stories about pigments and their origins, HOWEVER, there are several dozen little bits snuck into the text that all start, "I like to imagine that..." Well, guess what lady, I don't want to know about how you IMAGINE historical events to have played out. It's often not clear when we emerge back from imagination-land and back into facts, so now my brain is mishmashing true things with what Victoria Finlay wishes were true. As a somewhat sidenote, this is what I don't like about historical fiction, it generally results in me at a party disclosing some mindboggling facts about something I read, only to realize later when my ass (or brain, rather) is being handed to me on a plate, that it's not true and I had conflated the "historical" with the "fiction".
All in all, I still would recommend this book to people who are interested in this topic, I just wish it never strayed from the already interesting stories about the origin of pigments/dyes.
July 11, 2011
Finlay travels all around the world trying to find out the history of colors (she travels so much you wonder how her publisher could have afforded all that airfare and travel expenses). The funny thing is, much of the history is lost or inaccessible. She goes to Australia and decides not to try to find out more about the Aboriginal spiritual meanings of ochre out of respect for the culture. Many times she goes to a place only to be disappointed to find nothing left or even--as in the case of Indian Yellow--a wild goose chase resulting from a story in a newspaper. The book seems as much about how much of our history is missing; I don't know many books either that embrace so many failings. While it is more like our own quests for understanding and finding of knowledge, it's hard not to want a published book to be the example of success.
The interweaving of culture and history and color is good and even sometimes great. One of my favorite descriptions is the visit to the Afghanistan lapis lazuri mines; perhaps because this is one of the colors I have actually heard of combined with the area's standout against the Taliban. Yet, I kept comparing her to Simon Schama and finding her ability to make the history emotional relevant for me sub par.
The interweaving of culture and history and color is good and even sometimes great. One of my favorite descriptions is the visit to the Afghanistan lapis lazuri mines; perhaps because this is one of the colors I have actually heard of combined with the area's standout against the Taliban. Yet, I kept comparing her to Simon Schama and finding her ability to make the history emotional relevant for me sub par.
October 15, 2018
My top three thoughts on 'Color':
1. I, like probably half the population in the world didn't bother to ponder about origins of colors let alone their history. They just magically appeared in my life in preschool and I took them for granted ever since. Then, I came across this book with the blurb mentioning that one of the common ingredient used in red dyes is the blood of thousands of insects. So, with my curiosity peaked, I began to read.
2. This book looks at vibrant colors of everyday objects (reds, yellows, blue, purples, and greens to name a few) that have complex and fascinating histories as well as reasoning for their uses. Even the processes involved in making the dyes and hues is interesting to read about.
3. I appreciate all the work Finlay put in through her research and travels to find out about the roots, customs and cultures of the colors. It has given me an appreciation of paints and pigments while educating me on the meanings behind them.
1. I, like probably half the population in the world didn't bother to ponder about origins of colors let alone their history. They just magically appeared in my life in preschool and I took them for granted ever since. Then, I came across this book with the blurb mentioning that one of the common ingredient used in red dyes is the blood of thousands of insects. So, with my curiosity peaked, I began to read.
2. This book looks at vibrant colors of everyday objects (reds, yellows, blue, purples, and greens to name a few) that have complex and fascinating histories as well as reasoning for their uses. Even the processes involved in making the dyes and hues is interesting to read about.
3. I appreciate all the work Finlay put in through her research and travels to find out about the roots, customs and cultures of the colors. It has given me an appreciation of paints and pigments while educating me on the meanings behind them.
November 16, 2018
As a part-time quilter (impartial to scrappy rainbow quilts) part-time scientist with a dream to travel the world one day, I loved Finlay’s Colour. I really enjoyed the mix of travel stories, snippets from history and personal anecdotes while Finlay travelled the world to discover how each colour of the paintbox came about. Rather than reading it all in one go, this book was great to have on my bedside to pick up and read a chapter or story between fiction novels, if I only had a short time to read, or when my current novel got a little too intense.
August 11, 2020
It’s fascinating that man started with very few colors on his palate, from nature and his surroundings. The pallet blossomed in many different ways in different parts of the world. All centering around these natural colors. Each continent going off in slightly and radically different directions at the same time,often signifying friends and strangers. Well worth the read.
June 18, 2012
One of my favourite books on color. I go back to it over and over.
August 8, 2017
If I were a history buff, I'm sure I'd have found it at least a little bit lovely. But a history buff I am not, and the first 28 pages were some pretty dry reading and gives non-fiction a bad name.
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