Color: A Natural History of the Palette

[yomikoma]

Just finished: I really enjoyed Victoria Finlay’s 2002 book _Color: A Natural History of the Palette_ (slightly different name in other countries). Knowing where the world used to get its colors and how that changed was fascinating as an artist and her research took her all over the world to interesting places

Examples: “ultramarine“ and “indigo” are about where those dyes come from rather than their actual shade, an often-taught story about yellow dye in India may possibly be nonsense, how (conveniently for the book’s rainbow organization) the discovery of synthetic violet gave rise to all modern synthetic dyes.