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Colour; Travels through the Paintbox

Author: Victoria Finlay
Category: Art Theory
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 0 340 733 292
Year: 2002
Subject: Travel, Colour, History, Painting
Description: Part travelogue, part narrative history, `Colour` unlocks the history of the colours of the rainbow, and reveals how paints came to be invented, discovered, traded and used. This remarkable and beautifully written book remembers a time when red paint was really the colour of blood, when orange was the poison pigment, blue as expensive as gold, and yellow made from the urine of cows force-fed with mangoes. It looks at how green was carried by yaks along the silk road, and how an entire nation was founded on the colour purple.

`Colour` lifts the lid on the historical palette and unearths an astonishing wealth of stories about the quest for colours, and our efforts to understand them.
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