Victoria Finlay

I've always been fascinated about the origins of colour, and in Color - A Natural History of the Palette, author Victoria Finlay travels the world in her search for the origin and birthplace of colors and dyes.

I wasn't interested in the author's personal travelogue, so I initially had the intention of skipping over any boring parts and jumping straight to the facts about the colours which are conveniently broken down into the following chapter headings:

1. Ochre
2. Black and Brown
3. White
4. show more Red
5. Orange
6. Yellow
7. Green
8. Blue
9. Indigo
10. Violet
What I found surprising was that there were no boring bits! Finlay has managed to keep herself out of the book for the most part, and the stories that were included were historically relevant to the colour being discussed and I didn't end up skipping a single paragraph.

Finlay's passion for color and dyes are clear early on, but far from boring the reader her enthusiasm is infectious and I found myself becoming quite excited when she found her first indigo plant or saw a purple field of saffron crocus (used for the color yellow) for the first time.

Some of my favourite facts include:
- Red was made from the blood of the Cochineal insect, which lives on a cactus leaf
- The colour yellow was made from saffron, harvested from the saffron crocus flower, however only 3 strands of saffron are collected from each flower.
- In 1775, arsenic was used to create a color called Scheele's Green. It took until 1880 for people to realise that the wallpapers and paints using this green (and other paints containing arsenic) were killing people and making others very sick. e.g. a cat had become covered with pustules after being locked in a green room.
- Purple is the colour that has been most legislated about over the longest time in history.
- Purple has been a regal colour for centuries and one form of purple was made from shellfish and worn by emperors of Ancient Rome. Finlay writes that those who wore it "probably left a cloud of garlicky, fishy smells in their wake," and that perhaps it was the "scent of power" at the time. What a thought!

I learned so much about the history of colour, dyes, art, art forgery, culture, events in history and trade across many countries and different time periods in the world's history. Everything from a secret green used on ancient Chinese porcelain to the colour blue used to dye English police uniforms in the 1960s was covered, all of which I found fascinating and easy to digest in Finlay's conversational writing style.

I thoroughly recommend Color - A Natural History of the Palette to readers who enjoy art, culture, history, non fiction and have a natural curiosity about the colours around us; great for trivia nights too! show less

To research the history of color is brilliant like a box of sixty-four. Who, for example, has thought about from where ochre originated? According to Finlay, ochre is the first color(s) of paint. I did not know that and to be totally honest, nor have I ever thought about ochre in this way. [My only thoughts in ochre were to be confused about what shade of yellow, red, or brown it is supposed to be.] Did you ever wonder what the HB on a pencil meant? Hardness and blackness. How about the show more origin of the phrase, "cut through all this red tape"? Who knew? Apparently, Finlay. That's who. She took the time to travel the globe looking for answers about color: Australia for ochre, England for black and brown, China for white, Chile for red, Italy for orange, India for yellow,...I wanted to make a map of all her travels. On the heels of reading Travels in a Thin Country I couldn't stop comparing Sara Wheeler's adventure to that of Victoria Finlay.
There is a fair amount of humor in Color. To see what I mean, find the section where Finlay describes the interesting practice of boiling cow urine after the bovine have been fed a steady diet of mango leaves for two weeks straight. show less

Faith is for fools, and Faith in conservation. New approaches to religions and the environment is an extremely naive publication. The book consists of two parts. Part 1 consists of five chapters describing world efforts in environmental protection and the religious dimension in views on the environment. Part 2 consists of 12 short chapters, an introduction followed by 11 chapters each devoted to one of the major religions. For each of these religions, the authors point out what the basic show more views of each of these religions is on the world and the environment. However, this is all very theoretical. The authors suggest that almost all religions are very positive about protecting nature and the environment, but they seem to forget that this has not helped very much during the past 1000 years, or so. Besides, the overall worldwide trend is one of secularisation, which means that religious groups have less influence than before. Since the book apparently in meant to show similarities between religions, the structure of the 11 chapters in Part 2 is similar, making the book boring and repetitive. Many sections in each of these chapters are very short, half a page or less. The five chapters in Part 1 are simple, while a lot of interesting material is spread out over the introductions to each of the 11 chapters of Part 2. show less

Summary: The title of this book is a play on words: jewels themselves are frequently buried treasure, but every jewel also contains a buried treasure of stories of its origin, ownership, and significance. Part geology, part cultural history, part economics and business, and part travelogue, Buried Treasure uncovers some of these stories for some of the most valuable lumps of rocks in the world.

Each chapter focuses around a type of gem, starting with amber and moving up the Mohs' scale of show more hardness through jet, pearl, opal, peridot, emerald, sapphire, ruby, and finally diamonds. For each, Finlay travels around the world - from opal mines in Australia, to the historic source of Baltic amber, to an Native American reservation in Arizona, to the Burmese ruby mines under heavy military guard - and examines the historical production and importance of the jewel, some of its geological properties, the current state of the gem market, and how the gem affects the lives of the people who mine it, trade it, sell it, and eventually wear it.

Review: I want Victoria Finlay to write more books! This is the type of non-fiction I love, the type that lured me away from being an exclusive fiction reader. I can't even pick out a topic I want Finlay to cover in her next book, because that's the magic of her writing: I didn't even know I was interested in gemology until I started reading, but within a few chapters I was not only interested but fascinated. A similar thing happened when I read her book Colors: A Natural History of the Palette; I had no logical reason to be interested in the history of pigment production, but Finlay's writing drew me in and I couldn't stop reading.

Her prose is lively and compelling, and although there are frequent tangents into some obscure bit of history, or chemical geology, or mythology, the result is more like a narrative travelogue than a dry treatise. In truth, each chapter reads somewhat like an extended National Geographic article, albeit with fewer pictures (there are maps of the relevant jewel locations in the beginning, a center section with some color photos, and black-and-white photos and illustrations scattered throughout.)

This format makes it immensely easy to read, although there were inevitably a few places where I wanted more technical information - more chemistry, diagrams of the various cuts of precious stones, etc. I also would have happily read a fatter book that included chapters on some of the other jewels she didn't cover. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book; it was easy to read, very thorough, and full of fascinating tidbits that I never would have learned elsewhere - probably because I never would have known to go looking for them. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Fans of Mary Roach's style of narrative non-fiction will enjoy this book, although Finlay's style is not as snarky as Roach's. For non-readers of non-fiction, either of Finlay's works would be an accessible way to dip a toe in the waters of fascinating narrative non-fiction. show less