Color: A Natural History of the Palette

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.

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.

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.

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.