It is unfortunate that the book will possibly be classified as an “art history” book and therefore lose large chunks of a potential audience. It is well-written, erudite, informative and thoroughly entertaining. These nut-like formations, when squeezed on paper, give an intense black color.įinlay’s Color is the kind of nonfiction book that comes along just once in a while. Oak trees produce galls when invaded by wasps. A medieval black ink was made from wasps.This liquid when rubbed on skeins of white thread dyes them purple. When removed from its rock, the snail “weeps”. A special kind of sea snail in Mexico cries “purple tears”.Often human urine was used as a reducing agent and ships in England carried around pots of urine for use in the indigo dyeing industry. The color indigo, meaning “from India” is made by crushing the leaves of the indigo plant.One of the most popular reds, cochineal, is made from the crushed bodies of cochineal beetles.Mention must be made here of just a few of the many intriguing facts in Color: The colors and the stories behind make for infinitely fascinating characters. When Finlay was working on the book, she says she was warned that there was not a central character in her book and therefore her endeavor was in trouble. Not a page goes by where one does not learn something new. The result is a work of nonfiction that is a great treasure trove of information. Finlay traveled all over the globe to discover the story behind every nugget of information that she uncovered about color.
Sometime around about then I decided in my small but very determined heart that I would find out 'about the colors.' One day.”Ĭolor is an exhaustively researched book.
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“I remember my father taking me by the hand and telling me that the stained glass had been created nearly eight hundred years ago,” she says, “Today, he said, we don’t know how to make that blue. On a visit to the Chartres cathedral in France with her parents, was spellbound by the patterns of blue and red dancing on the floor tiles. Each color, as it turns out, has many intriguing stories behind it, and Finlay delves into many of these with boundless enthusiasm.įinlay’s inspiration to find more about the world of color came early, when she was eight. Color: A Natural History of the Palette is, as the title implies, an exploration into the stories behind the colors that make up the spectrum.
It was worth it, at least for readers the book is a delight. Victoria Finlay quit her regular day job as arts editor of the South China Morning Post to research and write her book Color.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette - book review
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