Color: A Natural History of the Palette

By Victoria Finlay

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B00A2PQBEM
• ISBN13: 9780812971422
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

All the colors of the rainbow

Colour is an interesting book. Some chapters are more informative than others. Esentially the book is a travelogue with the trips held together by the common theme of color. By far the weakest chapter is "Orange" in that it is more a chapter about music than it is about the hue Finlay was supposedly studying. The best chapters are "Red", "Yellow" and "Blue." In these three chapters Finlay hits her stride, tracking down the history, politics and oddities of these hues.

Branche'

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.

The Travel History of Artist Pigments

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.

A rainbow of anecdotes

If you've ever painted or dyed fabrics have you ever wondered where your colours originated? This book takes you on a journey through a painting and dye rainbow. Through numerous anecdotes and stories we go hunting for things like the source of Indian Yellow, the lapis lazuli mines of Afghanistan, and the delicate green of the celadon porcelains of China. One thing this book does is show the unreliability of mythic stories on the source of various colours and the secrecy and economic strength these dyes and paints held for various people throughout the centuries. You will not gain all the secrets to the various colours of the rainbow in this book, but you will gain an appreciation for how much knowledge has been lost or corrupted over the centuries and how hard it was to develop simple things like colours that we take for granted today.This book is recommended for anyone who has ever painted or dyed - you'll get a new appreciation for those people in the past whose skills we probably really don't truly appreciate today.