Color

A Natural History of the Palette

By: Victoria Finlay

Narrated by: Victoria Finlay

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.

Critic reviews

“This is a rare and wonderful book–a model of erudition and charm, the writing elegant and precise, and with at least one new and fascinating revelation on every single page. I could not be more enthusiastic.”
–SIMON WINCHESTER
Author of The Professor and the Madman

“Until I read this book, I was colorblind.”
–CYNTHIA ROWLEY

Stories, adventures, about COLOR!

The stories describe colors, history, science and personal adventures. Author does extremely well weaving all of them together for each color. I loved learning about the historical numbers of rainbow colors and how chemicals added or omitted changes a color.

An excellent “drop in to listen” book. It’s added to my revisit list

A lovely walk though colours and where they were found throughout history. I will listen to this again.

Historical and personal information combined to make an interesting story. I will listen to this again.

An odyssey of color

I was enthralled from the first utterance of Victoria Finley’s voice. It’s an epic adventure that gives the ubiquitous colors that surrounds us an explanation of their many exotic and secret beginnings.
I highly recommend to anyone who likes a good adventure story to those who want to know how the colors in their palettes came to be.

Indian Yellow is my new favorite color

The author takes us on a global journey, from India to the Australian Outback, to remote caves in Afghanistan, for a thrilling backstory on what literally makes artist’s colors what they are. As an artist I was really into this book and its many vignettes. The reading was fine, maybe not the best, but I prefer to hear the author read their own work, as this one does. Kudos

amazing

Loved it, wish there was multiple volumes. It is intriguing beyond imagination and I am sure there was plenty more to share. I am now on my personal journey to learn MORE.
Thank you!