Is it self-serving to love the quote that opens The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair? Yes. But so what. It’s from the 18th Cent. artist John Ruskin:
“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
The book is a fascinating exploration of the crazy histories of 75 different hues–how they came into and out of fashion in art and clothing, their socioeconomic and political roles, the characters that championed them and those they poisoned. There’s something for everyone here, plus the book is gorgeous, each page dipped in the hue she’s talking about.
And in hardcover it’s only $20!
Have you ever heard of these colors: Gamboge? Isabelline? Orpiment? Baker-Miller Pink? Me neither. FYI… Orpiment is a gold hue that was about 60% arsenic. Gamboge is a similar hue with different but equally fatal flaws. I have heard of Woad, though.
Woad is an indigo dye made from the leaves of a type of mustard plant. I’m familiar with it because a couple of years ago a French friend and I visited the town of Lectoure in SW France which was once a major producer until simpler cheaper sources of indigo were discovered in India. In the middle ages they harvested the leaves in the fall, crushed them at a woad mill to produce a paste that was left outside to ferment for several weeks. 
Then the dryish paste was formed into grapefruit-sized balls and left to dry in the sunshine for 4 months, reducing to the size of dark brown golf balls for easier transport across Europe. Eventually the balls were ground and dissolved to use as dye or paint colorant. It took a (shit) ton of leaves to make 4 lbs pigment. (How the hell did early color explorers figure these things out?) Everywhere in Lectoure you see this color, like on the shutters of the “blue” museum, where we saw fabric being dyed woad blue. The gal below is giving us the Lectoure lecture, en français. I understood 25%.
As with many beautiful dyes, the process of making the color polluted local waterways. Sigh. Woad production was pretty much extinct in Europe by the early 1700s.
Speaking of the color blue, savor the opening lines of “Sacre Bleu” a fantastical novel by the inimitable Christopher Moore, as he reimagines the French Impressionist painters as they one by one fall under the mysterious spell of a special blue paint supplied by a very strange color man. I drove all the way from Portland to San Francisco in one long day listening to it, stopping only to pee and eat–it was that terrific a tale.
“How do you know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else? You cannot get a grip on blue. Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye, a devil’s tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin’s cloak, a monkey’s ass. It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.”
Upcoming classes at Clark College in April: Going Gray Gracefully and Clutter-Clearing and Downsizing.
I send out a colorful and eclectic newsletter most Thursdays and would love to include you (and any of your friends who might be interested). Lots of photos. Use the share buttons at the bottom of this post. That’s why they’re there.
Meanwhile, here I am enjoying the cherry blossoms along the Willamette River in downtown Portland.
And of course if you’d like to set up an appointment or have questions about getting your colors done (personal or interiors as well…) just fill out the form below. No spam ever.
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