Product Description
From the painted caves at Lascaux, 40,000 years old, to the medieval cloth industry to today's computerized chemistry, this engaging book surveys the history of dyes and pigments-in a work as rich, varied, and colorful as a box of crayons.

160 illustrations, 135 in full color,

Amazon.com Review
In our overstimulated, color-saturated society it is easy to forget the impact of color in the dull world before cheap dyes and plastics. Colors is a delightful little book, highly illustrated and packed with intriguing information. It traces the history of dyes and pigments from cave paintings to modern textiles. The book's four sections cover the uses of color in ancient times; its development and refinement in the Middle Ages; the explosion of supply and demand after the Renaissance; and the triumph of industrial chemistry in synthesizing and inventing colors. Production processes often paralleled those of alchemy, giving an almost magical quality to colors. Dyes were expensive in medieval Europe and could increase the price of a cloth tenfold; thus color was used to indicate social status, with aristocrats in bright robes standing out against the drab mob. Since antiquity, writers have compiled technical manuals on dyeing and pigment manufacture, often using more ancient texts, so that a great many antique recipes and techniques have been preserved. We learn, for example, how Indian yellow was made from a concentrated extract of the urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves (which was not healthy for the cows). Every page of the book has interesting tidbits of information, such as the derivation of blue jeans (from bleu de Genes, Genoa blue, a form of indigo). Clearly written and well-designed, Colors reminds us of the powerful ways color permeates our lives. --John Stevenson

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 3 reviews)

When colors are boring

I was so looking forward to receiving this book that when it arrived I immediately started to read. What a disappointment. It was full of fairly useless information and not at all entertaining or a joy to read which I'd expected it to be. I've given it a rating of 2 but had to think long and hard to even go that high.
February 08, 2008

A LOT of information packed into a deceptively small package.

_Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments_, is an excellent little book to read if you are interested in colors. It covers pre-history up through the modern era, and it discusses some of the chemistry, much of the mineralogy, and a lot of the economics & politics that went into the use of different dyes & pigments through the eons.

It is also lavishly illustrated, with many many photos, including photos of famous works of art, close-up photos showing artistic techniques, photos of artists' materials, and photos of historical treatises relating to cloth dyeing and other skills. There is a lot of good technical content, including explanations of the differences between dyes, pigments and lakes, and details of attempts in antiquity to create artificial colors, going as far back as the Egyptians.

The chapters are Painting & Dyeing, which covers paints and dyes from antiquity to the Middle Ages; Colors in the Middle Ages, which covers new technological & economic developments in the Middle Ages; The Explosion of Supply and Demand, which covers how the increased trade of the Renaissance, Enlightenment Era, and the Industrial Age drove the search for new colors; and The Triumph of Industrial Chemistry, which describes how colors are made today.

There is also a chapter titled Documents, which has excerpts from a number of historical works about dyes & pigments, and that chapter alone is worth the price of the book. The bibliography is also excellent.

It was a bit slow in places, and since it was originally written in French, there is a certain flow to the text that is subtly different from many contemporary books written by native English speakes. But, the differences are not unpleasant, and for the most part the text is very engaging.

I did notice that it repeats the statement that India Yellow was made from the concentrated urine of cows who at only mangoes, and according to Victoria Finlay in _Color: A Natural History of the Palette_, that provenance is mythical. But that was the only jarring note I found in the entire work.
March 21, 2006

A treasure chest of interesting trivia

I am a Color Manager for one of the worlds largest paint companies and even though I have been working with pigments for 15 years I have found this book to be a treasure chest of interesting trivia that I didn't know or had long forgotten.
But this book is not just for chemists. If you are like me interested in art, especially paintings, you will find that this book gives you a wealth of information and facts that one can use to better understand the development of art through the centuries.
I can highly recommend this beautifully illustrated booklet which is fun to read to everybody (not just color nerds like me).
October 16, 2001

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Color: A Natural History of the Palette
by Victoria Finlay

Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color
by Philip Ball

A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire
by Amy Butler Greenfield

Blue: The History of a Color.
by Michel Pastoureau

Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism
by John Gage