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Title: Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay ISBN: 0-345-44430-2 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Pefect!
Comment: I loved this book and hated to see it end. It's part history, part art, part anthropology, and part travelogue and just a perfect read if you have an interest in any or all these subjects.
Findley's style is breezy but informative. The one chapter that got a little slow was the one on the violin/orange but then if you were a musician it might be just the right chapter!
Rating: 5
Summary: Definitve popular history of colour
Comment: I thoroughly enjoyed this reportage, where Victoria tracks down the origns of so many colours I knew from my childhood paintbox and later days with an aniline dyestuff manufacturer. However good the book is, and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in colourants and their origins, I was left wanting more......an upto date Part 2 please, to answer the questions that were left unanswered such as, "Is the lack of vivid bright orange just a reaction to the 60' & 70's overuse or is it still the case that cadmium orange (which does not get a mention) has not been replaced with anything quite as powerful? and what are the colours we now use in our paint boxes, wallpapers and so on?"
Why am I posing these questions, well Victoria is just the person to tell us auhtoritatively & accurately. I only had a few quibbles with the entire 400+ pages, one was an editor's slip that allowed India to be separated into Bangladesh, India & Pakistan in 1947! Which I am sure the author knows was not quite the instant route it seems (first it was the eastern half of the division known as Pakistan i.e. East Pakistan which then separated in 1971 I believe from West Pakistan and became Bangladesh). Another was the rather simlplistic way she refers to chemical formulas, yes of course AsS is a combination of 1 molecule each of arsenic & sulphur whereas As2S3 combines in the ratio of 2:3, however whether this means in fact the latter is any more poisonous than the former can not be assumed from the chemical formula....if I remember my chemistry correctly you need to understand which is more soluble in water or most readily adsorbed in the stomach (a solution of HCl I believe). If the author has confirmed this it was not clear from the text and copiuous and excellent notes. Lead as usual gets a poor press, it would have been nice to see it labelled as harmless until compounds are airborne and/or actually disolved. Lastly I really enjoyed reading about FDA "enforced inks" (as in tattoo inks. In my days of permitted food & cosmetic colours the term was "FDA Approved", however the process of approval and batch certification would no doubt be viewed as enforcement by many I suspect!
Please don't let my minor quibbles spoil a interesting, unique and very accurate book which I found a delight to read and one I look forward to re-reading, somehting I hardly ever do - life is too short!
Hope this helps
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Title: Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments by Ber Francois/Guineau Delamare ISBN: 0810928728 Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color by Philip Ball ISBN: 0226036286 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction by John Gage ISBN: 0520222253 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield ISBN: 0393020053 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism by John Gage ISBN: 0520226119 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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