Color

About this book

Victoria Finlay travels the world and moves through history to show how the colors people have prized helped shape culture. She looks at the physical sources of color, from precious minerals to insect blood, and at the social and political meanings colors have carried. Along the way it asks how prized blue pigment traveled to Michelangelo's brush from lapis mines in Afghanistan, and what links brown paint to Egyptian mummies. The author also travels old silk trade routes by donkey and spends time with Chilean farmers who breed insects for their red blood.