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Kaleidoscope Collection: Books about color and the world it illustrates
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items Are you an artist who wants to understand color an another level? Does a certain call out to you as yours? The anthropology of color is a deep and rich history of artistic, scientific and cultural endeavors all relating to our beautiful rainbow. If y...
Map
Sections
6
Rainbow
Pink/Purple/Mauve
Green
Black/White
Yellow/Orange/Red
Blue
Rainbow
These are books that look at how color intertwined and became a part of their symbols of time. How the nature of colors came to effect our moods and why we feel so close to certain ones
How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood wear Lincoln green? I love how Finley ...
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, I love how he tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on ou...
Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of... book by Philip Ball
I like the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes, and hues. 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...
The Secret Lives of Colour book by Kassia St. Clair
Did you know that the Egyptians created the first synthetic color and used it to create the famous blue crown of Queen Nefertiti? Or that the noblest purple comes from a predatory sea snail? In the Roman Empire, hundreds of thousands of snails had to...
Chromatopia: An Illustrated History of... book by David Coles
Pink/Purple/Mauve
From an accident in a lab to a moving poetic connection from color to person, purple as been a status symbols since the beginning of modern civilization.
In a "witty, erudite, and entertaining" (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry research. Occasionally honored i...
Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That... book by Simon Garfield
Pink has such powerful associations today that it's hard to imagine the color could ever have meant anything different. But it's only since the introduction of the Barbie doll in 1959 that pink has become decisively feminized. Indeed, in the eighteen...
Pink: The History of a Color book by Michel Pastoureau
Steele and her co-authors tell the whole story of this controversial color, emphasizing how its meanings changed throughout the centuries and across the globe, in cultures as diverse as France, India, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. I love how ...
Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty,... book by Valerie Steele
Green
Green is life itself, the color nature can never be without. A living breathing color
We are all fascinated by the wonder of color, from the lightest to the darkest, from one shade to another. I love how it’s a series explores the subtle differences of each color, how they were used, and why they were so important to famous artists th...
True Color: Green: Exploring Color in... book by Giovanna Ranaldi
Black/White
It is not boring, these colors are standard for a reason. A dramatic collision of light
I love the fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the color white in European societies, from antiquity to today. Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images ranging from the ancient world to the twenty-first century, Whit...
White: The History of a Color book by Michel Pastoureau
Yellow/Orange/Red
The deep passionate fury behind the color can be found in these books.
The color red has represented many things, from the life force and the divine to love, lust, and anger. Up through the Middle Ages, red held a place of privilege in the Western world. For many cultures, red was not just one color of many but rather t...
Red: The History of a Color book by Michel Pastoureau
Interweaving mystery, empire, and adventure, Amy Butler Greenfield's masterful popular history offers a window onto a world far different from our own: a world in which the color red was rare and precious--a source of wealth and power for those who c...
A Perfect Red book by Amy Butler Greenfield
Literally worth their weight in gold, sunset-red saffron threads are prized internationally. Saffron can be found in cave art in Mesopotamia, in the frescoes of ancient Santorini, in the dyed wrappings of Egyptian mummies, in the saffron-hued robes o...
Saffron: A Global History book by Ramin Ganeshram
Blue
Blue has had such a deep connection to the nature around us, or at least covering us. Blue is a mystery and a common color all in one. Green is life itself, the color nature can never Ben without. A living breathing color
In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise—the color and the gem—to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape.
The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Like cotton, indigo has defied its humble origins. Left alone it might have been a regional plant with minimal reach, a localized way of dyeing textiles, paper, and other goods with a bit of blue. In Red, White, and Black Make Blue , Andrea Feeser te...
Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo... book by Andrea Feeser
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the ages Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now cit...
Blue: The History of a Color book by Michel Pastoureau
Brimming with rich, electrifying tales of the precious dye and its ancient heritage, Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan; Jewish "rag traders"; a Massachusetts t...
Indigo book by Catherine E. McKinley
Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in th...
Black in Blues : How a Color Tells the... book by Imani Perry