Colour

Victoria Finlay became fascinated with colour after a childhood visit to Chartres cathedral, when she was mesmerised not by the architecture but by the blues and reds of the stained glass windows dancing on the stone floors. It was a fascination that was to lay dormant for many years until, as a newspaper arts editor, she happened upon a book about colour which made her realize that while art history is usually about those producing the art, there is much to be learned about the raw materials: the paints and the dyes. Her search for a book which would satisfy her thirst for knowledge was fruitless and so she decided to write one herself. She set out on a voyage of discovery which would take her from the graphite mines of the Lakeland fells to the ultramarine mines of Afghanistan, from caves in the Dordogne with their ancient charcoal paintings to the saffron fields of Iran. Whilst the book documents in fascinating and well-researched detail the origins and production methods of numerous pigments, with intriguing facts about everything from cochineal beetles to the lethal arsenic present in green wallpaper which may have been responsible for the death of Napoleon, the book does much more besides. As Finlay immerses herself in the different cultures of the world, she dips into folk legend, anthropology and politics as she writes of the aboriginal people of Australia and the change, or lack thereof, in Afghanistan since September 11 2001. Finlay writes with an obvious enthusiasm for her subject and although a little restraint might have made for a shorter and more manageable book, the reader cannot fail to be impressed by the scope of her enterprise. (Kirkus UK)