Color: A Natural History Of The Palette (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
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!
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.
What do You think about Color: A Natural History Of The Palette (2003)?
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....
—Nancy McClure
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
—Tracey
I learned so much from this book, like . . . the formula for Red is relatively unchanged from the beginning of its existance, searching for the origin of Orange can teach you a lot about violins, Yellow and White are the deadlyest colors, and Green, although the most prevelent in nature, is the hardest color to replicate in paint. This book is also a travel journal, so I felt like I was getting to visit a lot of unusual places as I read. Unusual places, unusual facts, and a broud scope of information. This book was perfect for me.
—Sarah
