Due to the nature of the content, and not being an artist and therefore more interested in the science angle, certain portions were a little dry but the work as a whole was worth the short bouts of disinterest. Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug would also be a great consecutive read for those interested in how the demand for synthetic dyes launched the profession of chemistry, and resulted in the pharmaceutical industry.
I would also recommend reading on a tablet capable of color, as there are examples of the colors throughout the book, which I felt added to the experience. View 2 comments. Dec 26, F rated it it was amazing Shelves: , non-fiction. Loved this. This book appearance-wise is very pretty but not much on the inside, I came expecting a book about the meaning and effect of colours but instead a boring account of some shades of each colour.
My problem was that it was boring and monotonous even though I am interested in the topic, the writing wasn't captivating either. Also, some important shades weren't talked about such as turquoise or lilac or lemon yellow or coral or many others. One other issue I had is that the book didn't talk about the This book appearance-wise is very pretty but not much on the inside, I came expecting a book about the meaning and effect of colours but instead a boring account of some shades of each colour.
One other issue I had is that the book didn't talk about the meaning of colours??? I mean for the colour green she only talked about the negatives of it although green is a positive colour, she needed to state both the positives and negatives of each colour.
The good things were that it was well-researched and the book talked about cultures relating to each colour. View 1 comment. Nov 14, Jennifer rated it liked it. This was a fun glimpse into the world of color. Each vignette is short-usually a page or two-making this a great book to dip into in those spare moments that are too brief to allow for full immersion in a story world. The author sometimes goes off on tangents that seem only barely related to the color in question, and the pages were a bit uneven-some stories leapt off the page and dazzled like the brightest vermilion, while others were drier and more muted, more like the terre verte that has his This was a fun glimpse into the world of color.
The author sometimes goes off on tangents that seem only barely related to the color in question, and the pages were a bit uneven-some stories leapt off the page and dazzled like the brightest vermilion, while others were drier and more muted, more like the terre verte that has historically left artists indifferent and apathetic. Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the read, and the fact that I read through the glossary of "other interesting colors" wishing that St. Clair had dedicated full pages to these, too, bespeaks the fact that the book was, ultimately, successful in keeping my interest.
You can even imagine the writing process: pick up a color with whim, google to see if there were any interesting anecdotes, then lump them up. The end result? A book full of piecemeal information suitable for party chatting without organized idea or purpose. The amount of good reviews is a testimony of either the shallowness of our time, or the deluge of fake reviews. Hopefully it's the latter. Jan 06, Hannah rated it really liked it.
What a fascinating book! Why was blue formerly associated with girls and pink associated with boys? Why do What a fascinating book! Why do many Islamic countries have green in their flags? And much more I learned a lot from reading it and recommend it to art and history enthusiasts! Feb 16, thefourthvine rated it liked it Shelves: non-fiction. This book would be an interesting podcast. One unusual color name per episode, with a random collection of facts about it — I can see how that would be a winning formula.
But the problem is that this entire book is just random facts about some colors — Prussion blue, avocado, lead white. This book is the written equivalent of sitting at a long dinner next to somebody who k This book would be an interesting podcast.
This book is the written equivalent of sitting at a long dinner next to somebody who knows a lot of color trivia. And the thing is, I love trivia. But it turns out I have an upper limit on my tolerance for a diet of unalleviated trivia on colors. We chose this book for our January Amuse-Book because it's an absolutely wonderful read about the history behind some of our favorite hue's. It's a great conversation starter! You won't believe some of these stories, we can't wait for all of our babes and beaus to read!
A colourful read bound in a beautiful cover that would add colour to any coffee table. Our brains normally collect and apply cues about the ambient light and texture. We use these cues to adjust our perception, like applying a filter over a stage light. The poor quality and lack of visual clues like skin colour in the dress image meant that o A colourful read bound in a beautiful cover that would add colour to any coffee table.
The poor quality and lack of visual clues like skin colour in the dress image meant that our brains had to guess at the quality of the ambient light. Some intuited that the dress was being washed out by strong light and therefore their minds darkened the colours, others believed the dress to be in shadow, so their minds adjusted what they were seeing to brighten it and remove the shadowy blue cast.
There are two different types of colour mixing: additive light and subtractive paints. Because each paint pigment absorbs a different set of wavelengths of light, mix enough pigments together and they absorb every wavelength, becoming brown then black.
Mixtures generally become dull and murky compared to single pigments. Colours should be understood as subjective cultural creations: you could no more meaningfully secure a precise universal definition for all the known shades than you could plot the coordinates of a dream.
The Golden Gate Bridge had its colour chosen so as to blend in with the hills but pop against the sea and sky. The Dutch flag would have had orange in it, but no one could find a dye sufficiently colourfast, the orange strip either faded to yellow or deepened to red.
So by the s the Dutch gave up and began using red instead. Before the late s pink referred to a kind of pigment, consisting of a colourant e. Apparently the colour Baker-Miller pink aka drunk-tank pink could sap the strength of even the toughest man.
Then Pre-revolutionary France , as in now, indulging in the latest fashion trends signaled status, wealth and a sense of tribal belonging in the jeweled echo chamber of the French royal court. Prussian blue was used by John Herschel in combination with photosensitive paper to make a proto-photocopy. Sepia photographs came about as squid ink was used to replace the silver in the silver-based prints with a more stable compound. Often, the books I read are One Big Idea books e. Others are Many Small Idea books especially collections of essays.
This books is of an a different kind, unless you think that a color is an idea. Whatever the name is for the profession where you make sure that the printing doesn't mess up the colors, they must have been ecstatic about getting this job.
Every pages is a different color, and in a roughly one-inch column down the outer edge of each page is a band of color, illustrating what we are talking about. The colors are organized by what general part of the color spectrum we're on all the reds together, all the oranges, etc. Much of the discussion of each color is about the history of how the pigment came to be first discovered or, in some cases, it seems more appropriate to say "invented", as the process for many of them was elaborate and laborious.
There is also, of course, some discussion about how it is or was used. Not so much attention is paid, by most of us, nowadays, to the ability to conjure up in pigment or on the computer screen any color we can see.
For most of human history, it was not so. The discovery of a new pigment could set off something akin to the modern high-tech frenzies around smartphones, electric scooters, or Bitcoin. Many shades passed from rare and thus expensive and thus prestigious, to more plentiful but still prestigious and thus overused, to out of fashion and somewhat gauche.
This is the sort of book which I enjoy a nibble at a time, like the jar of chocolate treats which you need to limit yourself to a modest amount of each day.
Most often, I read only a single color per day along with examining its associated column of pigment on the outer edge of the page. When it was gone, I wished there were more. It took me well over months to read this and it hurt my brain. I'm thinking of gifting it to my favorite watercolor artist, it would better serve as a go-to reference source, rather than a sit-down "let's read for a bit" book! This is a nice diversionary read.
The many minute chapters are generally entertaining and informative. At first I thought the book would be solely about how artists made or obtained particular paint colors hundreds of years ago. There's a bit of that, and it's interesting enough, but fortunately the book mostly consists of mini-histories and cultural asides. Black and its assorted shades are covered in the final section and here the author seemed to run out of steam.
Maybe it was the color it This is a nice diversionary read. Maybe it was the color itself that brought about lackluster material or perhaps it was just a case of the limits of expanding magazine articles into a book but in any event I'm glad the book wasn't longer. Unrelated to the subject matter but a book I liked a lot that evolved from a magazine article, and would recommend, is The World in a Grain by Vince Beiser.
Besides its own entertainment value this book may be useful in leading the reader to books that cover subjects of interest in actual detail.
Bonus for Steely Dan fans: There are multiple mentions of the cave s of Altamira. Not the song, just the real cave. I'd never seen it referenced before and got a kick out of its multiple mentions. While I'm in the recommending spirit please check out the song if you can spare three and a half minutes; it's a hidden gem. View all 3 comments.
It's hard to describe what a delicious book this is. The author has combined her twin passions for color and fashion and mixed them together with history, art and chemistry to provide a delectable collection of morsels about where colors we might not think twice about first appeared in the human story, and how they and their making evolved over time.
I found this book on the "Staff Picks" shelf of our local independent bookstore and flipped it open to the pages on Tyrian Purple, Cleopatra's favor It's hard to describe what a delicious book this is. I found this book on the "Staff Picks" shelf of our local independent bookstore and flipped it open to the pages on Tyrian Purple, Cleopatra's favorite color.
In less than three pages, I learned about the labor intensive and incredibly stinky process used to manufacture this hue from the secretions of a Mediterranean mollusk nearly wiped out by the process, with a reported , animals required to make one garment. The process was so expensive that even a Roman emperor claimed to not be able to afford to buy his wife a Tyrian dress. Though not all colors in the book had such famous admirers, I found the stories behind even the blandest of shades to be endlessly fascinating.
Having grown up in a world where the magic of chemistry puts most all shades of color within ordinary reach, being briefly sent back to a time where that was not the case made me appreciate the rainbow around me in a way that I haven't in years. Jul 01, Toby rated it really liked it. Mind-boggling; the light fails in the evening, colours fade, leaves are no longer green - but then, they never were actually green A fascinating book, page after page of amusing and provocative colourful slices of art, history and philosophy; and much else besides.
Certainly a book to return to - and one to bore people with for a long time. Apr 22, Victor The Reader rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction-reviews , borrowed-from-library , my-five-star-books. Jul 12, Kopratic rated it really liked it. May 19, Kim rated it liked it Shelves: read-in , non-fiction.
An interesting journey trough different colors and their history. Apr 22, Yun rated it really liked it. The Secret Lives of Color takes us on a fascinating exploration of all the different colors throughout history and art.
The book is divided into short stories on each color, filled with details about how they were made and used throughout history. Before reading this book, I never gave much thought to all the colorful pigments we use in our daily lives, taking them rather for granted. This book's deeper look has made me realize that for much of history, it was difficult, expensive, and sometimes The Secret Lives of Color takes us on a fascinating exploration of all the different colors throughout history and art.
This book's deeper look has made me realize that for much of history, it was difficult, expensive, and sometimes harmful to get even a little color into people's lives. Does language play a part in our perception of colours? In most cases, the origins of why we view a colour in a certain way goes back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Blue was not always a boy's colour; pink was not always a girl's. Indeed, less than one hundred years ago, in the West, it was the other way round.
This book offers a lively, anecdotal treatment of the cultural mysteries of colour, and focuses on the way we respond to colours, the significance we give them - and how these things change over time and from place to place. It tells the story of how we have come to view the world through lenses passed down to us by art, science, politics, fashion, sport and, not least, prejudice.
Where do these elusive beings live, and what do they do? Why is it some see fairies and others do not? What's the truth about glamour? And why when they promise your dreams will come true, do fairies grant threewishes? Maggie Hamilton has spent a decade exploring the rich world of the fairy. Having talked with people from all walks of life, she captures their astonishing, sometimes poignant encounters with fairies here.
Read about the fairies found in people's homes and gardens, deep in nature, and in city streets and parks. On this mesmerising journey deep into this achingly beautiful otherworld, you'll discover the many exquisite possibilities present at dawn and dusk, and why the fairy kingdom has an ecology all of its own.
Learn about the notes plants sound, and why some indigenous peoples no longer need to pick a plant to access its healing properties. Find out how to work with fairies to heal the earth and your own bruised spirit, and how this quest can transform you inside and out. For those with their own fairy stories to tell, and fairy lovers everywhere. An invaluable reference for locating information and research into colour theory and practice.
In Hello Rainbow, meet Momtaz Begum-Hossain: a colour therapy expert on a mindful mission promoting the holistic hues of the rainbow. Colour is intrinsic to the human experience; it guides us with subconscious visual cues throughout our lives. Get it right in your design or art and you can enhance mood and atmosphere, and create a desired psychological or even physiological effect.
The Colour Bible is a contemporary handbook for navigating this fascinating world of colour. It dives into profiles of significant colours and tracks them through their genesis, historical usage in art and design, and contemporary connotations and uses. Score: 5. The fascinating spatial potential of color, and the multi-layered dimensions of interpretation in the experience of color are design and communication means which, however, are often not fully used — color oscillates between autonomy and functional purpose, and should be understood as a distinct "material" that can be used as part of the design.
The book focuses both on the tangible aspects and design criteria of color, and on its indeterminate nature and its experience value. Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating. Across fashion and politics, art and. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.
In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of colour tell the vivid story of our culture. Short-link Link Embed. Share from cover.
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