Color Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Praise

  PREFACE - The Beginning of the Rainbow

  INTRODUCTION - The Paintbox

  1 - Ochre

  SYDNEY

  DARWIN

  TRADING OCHRE

  OCHRE INCEST TABOOS

  THE EDGES OF ARNHEMLAND

  ALICE SPRINGS

  UTOPIA

  WHEN THE COLORS WERE TAKEN AWAY

  2 - Black and Brown

  THE FIRST PAINTING

  THE OTHER EARLIEST PAINTINGS

  IMPERMANENCE

  CHARCOAL

  SEDUCTIVE MASCARA

  PENCILS

  INK

  PERMANENCE

  DARK DYES

  DEAD BODIES

  THE JOURNEY

  3 - White

  DYING TO BE WHITE

  THE STORY OF THE SKELETONS

  THE SACRIFICE OF THE FIVE-PIGMENT GIRL

  THE ADVENTURES OF LANGDON WARNER

  WHITER SHADES OF PALE

  WHITE HOUSES

  PERFECT WHITES

  THE WOMAN IN WHITE: A POSTSCRIPT

  4 - Red

  THE PLANTATION

  THE OLD WORLD BUG

  NEW WORLD INSECT

  A SPY IN MEXICO

  INDIAN RED

  THE DRAGON AND THE ELEPHANT

  5 - Orange

  CREMONA

  BASTARD SAFFRON AND THE BLOOD OF DRAGONS

  MAD ABOUT MADDER

  ITALY

  6 - Yellow

  INDIAN YELLOW

  GAMBOGE AND ORPIMENT

  SAFFRON

  SAFFRON WALDEN

  IN WHICH I FIND JESUS

  PERSIAN YELLOW

  THE LAUGHING SPICE

  PURPLE MANTLES

  7 - Green

  THE SECRETS OF CELADON

  THE POISONER RETURNS

  THE LOST GREENS

  A ONE-POT DYE

  8 - Blue

  BEYOND THE SEAS

  THE KHYBER

  BAMIYAN

  A GREMLIN BLUE

  SECOND ATTEMPT

  THE COLOR OF THE SKY

  LOSING A SHOE

  CHARTRES BLUE

  THE VIRGIN’S ROBE

  9 - Indigo

  A FIGHTER’S WEED

  WOAD AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES

  INDIGO IN THE OTHER INDIES

  MAYAN BLUES

  ISAAC’S INDIGO

  A REBEL’S COLOR

  THE LAST INDIGO PLANT

  10 - Violet

  A FUNERAL

  THE PURPLE PEOPLE

  THE FLUTTERING OF A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS

  PASSION AND POWER

  TYRE

  A DYE FADES

  THE PURPLE OF THE MIXTECS

  THE SECRET OF TEKHELET

  EPILOGUE - The End of the Rainbow

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

  CREDITS

  Copyright Page

  For my parents, Jeannie and Patrick,

  who first showed me the place where light dances

  “LOADED WITH FASCINATING TIDBITS.” —Boston Herald

  “A rainbow of stories . . . Even casual natural history fans can enjoy Finlay’s conversational style and her enthusiasm for her little-understood topic.” —Chicago Tribune

  “Color is the essence of landscape, of mood, of our whole perception of the physical world. Victoria Finlay has traveled through Iran, Afghanistan, and other places to investigate the origin of all those tantalizingly sensual ochers and reds and blues. What a creative idea for a book!” —ROBERT D. KAPLAN, author of The Ends of the Earth and Eastward to Tartary

  “A model of erudition and charm, the writing elegant and precise.” —SIMON WINCHESTER

  “Exhilarating . . . Finlay’s wide-ranging, richly detailed, and bravely researched survey of the colors of the palette leaves few stones—be they lapis, malachite, or ochre—unturned. . . . You’ll never look at a box of Crayolas the same way.” —Book Street USA

  “Part travelogue, part history lesson, and part science seminar, Color takes us to remote parts of the world. . . . An inspired concept, Finlay shows the rich history behind what most of us take for granted.” —SOMA: Left Coast Culture

  “Packed with facts, fables, and anecdotes about the history of color, Finlay’s detailed and brilliantly researched account makes for a fascinating read.” —Australian Interior Trends

  “Compelling . . . Curious social mores, serendipitous science, and lots of skullduggery are all part of the rich spectrum Finlay so cheerfully illuminates.” —Booklist

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I had thought, when I set out on my travels—when I first tumbled through that paintbox—that I would somehow find, in the original stories of colors, something pure. It was a naïve Garden of Eden moment, and of course I forgot about the rainbow serpent that had to be there in order to make it a real paradise. In the historical and chemical paintbox I have found more corruption, poisonings, wars and politics than even the Medicis could have appreciated. Killer wallpapers, capital punishment for people using the wrong dyes, and beautiful blue stones which murder the lungs of those who find them underground: these have all featured in my travels. But in the process of uncovering them I have also found more wonderful and helpful people than I could have ever hoped. I can only thank some of them here.

  For the Ochre chapter I should like to thank: the Australian Consulate General in Hong Kong, who awarded me an arts fellowship in 1999; everyone at Beswick including Alan Bunton who took me fishing and the Popple family who looked after me on the night I was homeless; Sean Arnold of Animal Tracks; Nina Bove; Malcolm Jagamarra; Roqué Lee; Dave and Patsy at the Buffalo farm in Kakadu; Allan Marett; Ken Methven; Hettie Perkins; Simon Turner. And a particular thank you to Geoffrey and Dorn Bardon, who were generous with both their information and their friendship.

  For the Black and White chapters I should like to thank: Aidan Hart; Ann Coate; Susan Whitfield at the Dunhuang project; the Seniwati Gallery for Women’s Art in Bali; Michael Skalka for a happy day discussing Rembrandt’s palette and many other things; Norman Weiss; everyone who helped me at Farrow & Ball; Ralph Boydell, Phil Harland, and everyone who helped me at Spode.

  For my Red research I should particularly like to thank: Colores de Chile; Joyce Townsend at the Tate who also helped on many other paint history questions; and Dino Mahoney, Simon Wu and Barry Lowe who travelled with me on that underground train in Santiago.

  For the Orange chapter I should like to thank: Peter and Charles Beare; Ricardo Bergonzi; Harald Boehmer; Ian Dejardin and Amy Dickson at Dulwich Picture Gallery; Michael Noone; Sandra Wagstaff; Maxim Vengerov; Mary Cahill and Gamini Abeysekera at UNICEF.

  For Yellow, I am grateful to: Ana Alimardani; Fong So and Yeung Wai-man; Ian Garret at Winsor & Newton; Ebrahim Mukhtari; Tom and Emma Prentice for help in Saffron Walden; Mohammed Reza; Brian Lisus; Ellen Szita who appears for only a moment in the book, but our e-mail friendship has been stimulating and saffron-filled; Mahsoud and Nazanin and their family in Torbat; the Shariati family including Mrs. Shariati who provided a saffron feast to remember forever.

  For help in the Green chapter, I thank: Chris Cooksey; Caroline Dalton at New College in Oxford; Michael Rogers at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London; Dawn Rooney; Rosemary Scott; Peter Zhao who translated through all the Famen celadon mysteries.

  For my first Blue adventure in Afghanistan I am grateful to Jacquetta Hayes, who first invited me to cross the Khyber Pass; to Eric Donelli and Davide Giglio for their hospitality; Abdul Saboor Ulfat and his family and to Luc and everyone at Solidarité in Bamiyan for their h
elp and their picnics at turquoise lakes. For my second journey I thank Gary Bowersox; Letizia Rossano; Atif Rizvi; Antonio Donini of UNOCHA for letting me on that plane to Faizabad; Mervyn Paterson and Khalid Mustafawi for looking after me when I arrived, Bob Nickelsberg, Tony Davis, Abdullah Buharistani, Yaqoub Khan and all the people at Sar-e-sang and elsewhere who shared what they had, even when they had almost nothing. Also thanks to Louise Govier and her colleagues at the National Gallery in London.

  For Indigo I should like to thank: Jenny Balfour-Paul and her husband Glencairn for patiently checking and rechecking; Giacomo Chiari; Debbie Crum; John Edmonds for all his advice on both woad and purple; Pat Fish; Munirenkatappa Sanjappa at the Calcutta Botanical Gardens; John Stoker; Lionel Titchener.

  For my search for Violet, I am grateful to: Santiago de la Cruz; Zvi Koren; and Nell Nelson who ensured that the quest to find purple in Mexico featured almost as many margaritas as snails.

  And in addition I should like to thank: Genevieve Fox and Richard McClure for their hospitality on my numerous research visits to London; Donald Francis; Valerie Garrett for guidance on how to write a book proposal when all this was just a colorful fantasy; Eric Hilaire for his generous photo research; James Hodge; Don Jusko for an afternoon in Maui discussing pigments; Ted Katsargiris for asking people all over Cambodia about a mysterious yellow resin; Charles Anderson for reminding me how much I love libraries; NicholasWalt at Cornelissen’s in Great Russell Street, the most atmospheric artist’s shop in England; Dominic Lam; Peter Lucas at the University of Hong Kong; Steve McCarty; Alison Nadel; Wing, my travel agent, for never shirking questions like “What’s the cheapest route to Tehran? And can I go via Manchester?”; Martha Olo-an for looking after my home and animals so many times when I was away while if the world was fair she should have been with her own family in the Philippines; Hilary Goddard; Irene Nicholls for listening so patiently to all my draft chapters; Patrick Wolff; Ellen Pinto and Lawrence Herbert at Pantone; Martin Collins for solving my map crisis so quickly; Simon Trewin and Sarah Ballard at pfd for helping turn an idea into a book contract; Helen Garnon-Williams at Sceptre in London for helping making it into a better book; Dan Smetanka at Ballantine for his enthusiastic support from the very beginning and for champagne in Bryant Park; Emma Pearce, Joan Joyce and Sarah Miller at Winsor & Newton for their help and their pictures; the staff at the University of Hong Kong Library, the New York Public Library, the Indian National Library in Calcutta, the Library of Congress, the Post Office Archives, the Library of Mount Vernon. And most of all the wonderful British Library in London which became my second home. And finally Martin Palmer, without whom this book would have been written much more quickly, but with far less joy.

  PREFACE

  The Beginning of the Rainbow

  “An image reflected in a mirror, a rainbow

  in the sky, and a painted scene

  Make their impressions upon the mind, but in

  essence are other than what they seem

  Look deeply at the world, and see an illusion,

  a magician’s dream.”

  THE SEVENTH DALAI LAMA: “Song of the

  Immaculate Path” 1

  It was a sunny afternoon that still sparkled after earlier rain when I first entered Chartres cathedral. I don’t remember the architecture, I don’t even have a fixed idea of the space I was in that day, but what I do remember is the sense of blue and red lights dancing on white stones. And I remember my father taking me by the hand and telling me that the stained glass had been created nearly eight hundred years ago, “and today we don’t know how to make that blue.” I was eight years old, and his words knocked my explanation of the world into a tailspin. Up until then I had always believed that the world was getting better and better and more and more clever. But that day my tender theory about the Evolution of History fell on its head, and it has—for better or for worse—never been quite right ever since. And sometime around about then I decided in my small but very determined heart that I would find out “about the colors.” One day.

  But then I forgot. I didn’t follow a path that led me into glassmaking or even technically into art—my school did not offer the kind of creative environment where children without drawing skills were encouraged. Instead I discovered social anthropology, which was followed by a short spell in the business world, and then by newspaper journalism. But the news journalism became arts journalism, and every time I heard anecdotes about colors—an archaeologist explaining how the Chinese used to depend on Persia for the blue on their famous Ming porcelain; the astonishing discovery that English artists once smeared dead humans onto their canvases; artists in Hanoi talking about how their work had changed not just because they had new things to say as Vietnam opened up, but very simply because they had better and brighter paints—those childhood memories stirred.

  Then, one day, I arrived in Melbourne to cover the city’s arts festival for the South China Morning Post. I spent a spare hour between shows in a university bookshop. Casually picking up a heavy art book, I opened it at random and read these words: “INDIAN YELLOW: an obsolete lake of euxanthic acid made in India by heating the urine of cows fed on mango leaves.” And then these: “EMERALD GREEN: the most brilliant of greens, now universally rejected because it is a dangerous poison . . . Sold as an insecticide.” Art history is so often about looking at the people who made the art; but I realized at that moment there were also stories to be told about the people who made the things that made the art.

  My heart started beating, and I had a bizarre sensation that was rather like being in love. This was an annoying feeling to have in a bookshop so I tested myself. Even the (arguably) more boring “DUTCH PINK: a fugitive yellow lake made from buckthorn” made me swoon with its paradox. I was smitten, so I did what any reluctant lover might do when they don’t know what is good for them. I turned my back on it, took no note of its name or how to get hold of it . . . and then dreamed about it for months. Arriving back in Melbourne a year or so later on an Australian government arts fellowship, the first thing I did was return to the shop. By then the book—Ralph Mayer’s classic The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques—was reduced in price because too many people had thumbed through it. I took this as a good sign, and I bought it.

  In those twelve months I realized I had—almost subconsciously—been looking for a book that would answer my questions about paints and dyes: What does a cochineal beetle look like? Where on the map of Afghanistan can I find the ultramarine mines? Why is the sky blue?—and I could not find one anywhere. So I decided to write it myself. Since then a number of books about color have been published—Simon Garfield’s Mauve, Robert Chenciner’s Madder Red, François Delamare and Bernard Guineau’s Colour and most recently Philip Ball’s Bright Earth— and I have found some excellent sources in libraries, especially John Gage’s Colour and Culture and Jenny Balfour-Paul’s Indigo, but there are many more. I am glad I did not find them earlier or I would not have dared suggest my own book, and I would have missed some wonderful encounters and journeys discovering why red paint can really be the color of blood, or how indigo workers once threatened the foundations of the British Empire, or how an entire nation once made its trade—and got its name—from the color purple.

  There is a little theory mixed in with the journeys but this is not the place to find detailed debates on color harmonies or color science. Instead this is a book full of stories and anecdotes, histories and adventures inspired by the human quest for color—mostly in art but sometimes in fashion and interior design, music, porcelain and even, in one example, on pillar boxes. Most of the stories take place before the end of the nineteenth century: not because the twentieth is not interesting, but because so much happened after the 1850s in terms of color—in art, in music, in science, in health, in psychology, in fashion, indeed in every area—that these developments could be, and have been, each the subjects of their own books.

  The first challenge in writing about colors is
that they don’t really exist. Or rather they do exist, but only because our minds create them as an interpretation of vibrations that are happening around us. Everything in the universe—whether it is classified as “solid” or “liquid” or “gas” or even “vacuum”—is shimmering and vibrating and constantly changing. But our brains don’t find that a very useful way of comprehending the world. So we translate what we experience into concepts like “objects” and “smells” and “sounds” and, of course, “colors,” which are altogether easier for us to understand.

  The universe is pulsating with an energy that we call electromagnetic waves. The frequency range of electromagnetic waves is huge—from radio waves, which can sometimes have more than 10 kilometers between them to the tiny cosmic waves, which move in wavelengths of about a billionth of a millimeter—with X rays and ultraviolet and infrared and TV and gamma rays in between. But the average human eye can detect only a very small portion of this vast range—only, in fact, the portion with wavelengths between 0.00038 and 0.00075 millimeters. It seems a small differential, but these are magical numbers for our eyes and minds. We know this section as visible light, and we can distinguish about ten million variations within it. When our eyes see the whole range of visible light together, they read it as “white.” When some of the wavelengths are missing, they see it as “colored.”

  So when we see “red,” what we are actually seeing is that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with a wavelength of about 0.0007 millimeters, in a situation where the other wavelengths are absent. It is our brains (and our language) which inform us it is “red,” and at the same time they often attach cultural labels that tell us it is powerful, or that it is the color of love, or that it is a traffic sign which means we have to stop.

  In 1983 the American scientist Kurt Nassau identified fifteen ways in which something can be colored,2 and the list can (if you’re lucky) begin rather like a silly music-hall song: “Vibrations, excitations, incandescence of the limelight/Transitions and refractions, scattering of the white light . . . .” All very complicated. But, in simple terms, coloring can be divided into two main causes: chemical and physical. Within “chemical” causes of color we can include the vivid greens and yellows on the cover of this book, the delicate or brash hues of flower petals, the blue of lapis lazuli, the color of your skin and mine.