The Secret Lives of Color

by Kassia St. Clair

  6. J. C. Fitzpatrick (ed.), The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799, Vol. 7 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939), pp. 452–3.

  7. B. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 360.

  Fallow

  1. P. F. Baum (trans.), Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), p. v.

  2. Riddle 44: “Splendidly it hangs by a man’s thigh, / under the master’s cloak. In front is a hole. / It is stiff and hard . . .” Answer? A key.

  3. J. I. Young, “Riddle 15 of the Exeter Book,” in Review of English Studies, Vol. 20, No. 80 (Oct. 1944), p. 306.

  4. Baum (trans.), Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 26.

  5. Maerz and Paul, Dictionary of Color, pp. 46–7.

  6. J. Clutton-Brock, A NaturalHistory of Domesticated Mammals (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 203–4.

  7. Baum (trans.), Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, pp. 26–7.

  8. Young, “Riddle 15 of the Exeter Book,” p. 306.

  Russet

  1. Maerz and Paul, Dictionary of Color, pp. 50–1.

  2. Quoted in S. K. Silverman, “The 1363 English Sumptuary Law: A Comparison with Fabric Prices of the Late Fourteenth Century,” graduate thesis for Ohio State University (2011), p. 60.

  3. R. H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 55.

  4. Although russet was used in the adjectival sense as a color from the 1400s, it wasn’t until the sixteenth century that it became more of a brown than a gray. The Franciscans, an order of priests very active in Europe during the Middle Ages, gained their nickname, the grayfriars, from their habit of wearing russet cloth, and as late as 1611 “light russet” was given as a translation for the French gris in Cotgrave’s dictionary.

  5. G. D. Ramsay, “The Distribution of the Cloth Industry in 1561–1562,” in English Historical Review, Vol. 57, No. 227 (July 1942), pp. 361–2, 366.

  6. Quoted in Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, p. 56.

  7. S. C. Lomas (ed.), The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle, Vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), p. 154.

  Sepia

  1. R. T. Hanlon and J. B. Messenger, Cephalopod Behavior (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 25.

  2. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, “Inks, from a Lecture Delivered to the Royal Society,” in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 70, No. 3637 (Aug. 1922), p. 649.

  3. Ibid.

  4. M. Martial, Selected Epigrams, trans. S. McLean (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), pp. xv–xvi.

  5. Ibid., p. 11.

  6. C. C. Pines, “The Story of Ink,” in American Journal of Police Science, Vol. 2, No. 4 (July/Aug. 1931), p. 292.

  7. Field, Chromatography, pp. 162–3.

  Umber

  1. A. Sooke, “Caravaggio’s Nativity: Hunting a Stolen Masterpiece,” BBC.com (Dec. 23, 2013). Available at: www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131219-hunting-a-stolen-masterpiece (accessed Oct. 13, 2015); J. Jones, “The Masterpiece That May Never Be Seen Again,” in the Guardian (Dec. 22, 2008). Available at: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/dec/22/caravaggio-art-mafia-italy (accessed Oct. 13, 2015).

  2. Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 151–2.

  3. Field, Chromatography, p. 143.

  4. Finlay, Brilliant History of Color in Art, pp. 8–9.

  5. Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 162–3.

  6. Jones, “Masterpiece That May Never Be Seen Again.”

  7. Nativity remains on the FBI’s list of unsolved art crimes.

  Mummy

  1. S. Woodcock, “Body Color: The Misuse of Mummy,” in The Conservator, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1996), p. 87.

  2. Lucas and Harris, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, p. 303.

  3. Giovanni d’Athanasi recorded the sad fate of the insufficiently distinguished body of the governor of Thebes in his book published in 1836: “An English traveler, had just bought the fellow mummy of the governor of Thebes, but having taken it into his head, while on his road to Cairo, that there might be some gold coins in this mummy, he caused it to be opened, and not finding any thing in it of the nature he sought, he threw it into the Nile . . . Such was the fate of the mortal remains of the governor of Thebes” (p. 51).

  4. P. McCouat, “The Life and Death of Mummy Brown,” in Journal of Art in Society (2013). Available at: www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html (accessed Oct. 8, 2015).

  5. Ibid.

  6. Quoted ibid.

  7. Woodcock, “Body Color,” p. 89.

  8. G. M. Languri and J. J. Boon, “Between Myth and Reality: Mummy Pigment from the Hafkenscheid Collection,” in Studies in Conservation, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2005), p. 162; Woodcock, “Body Color,” p. 90.

  9. Languri and Boon, “Between Myth and Reality,” p. 162.

  10. McCouat, “Life and Death of Mummy Brown.”

  11. R. White, “Brown and Black Organic Glazes, Pigments and Paints,” in National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol. 10 (1986), p. 59; E. G. Stevens (1904), quoted in Woodcock, “Body Color,” p. 89.

  12. Criticism of the use of mummies in medicine had begun much earlier. In 1658 the philosopher Sir Thomas Browne had called it “dismal vampirism”: “The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummie is become Merchandise.”

  13. Diary of Georgiana Burne-Jones, quoted in Woodcock, “Body Color,” p. 91.

  14. Quoted in McCouat, “Life and Death of Mummy Brown.”

  15. Quoted in “Techniques: The Passing of Mummy Brown,” Time (Oct. 2, 1964). Available at: http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,940544,00.html (accessed Oct. 9, 2015).

  Taupe

  1. “The British Standard Color Card,” in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 82, No. 4232 (Dec. 1933), p. 202.

  2. The history of organizing and charting color in a systematic way has been a long and frustrating one, beginning with the first color wheel in Newton’s Opticks (1704) and continuing to the present day. A detailed account can be found in Ball, Bright Earth, pp. 40–54.

  3. Maerz and Paul, Dictionary of Color, p. v.

  4. “The British Standard Color Card,” p. 201.

  5. Maerz and Paul, Dictionary of Color, p. 183.

  Black

  1. M. Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color, trans. J. Gladding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 12.

  2. Quoted in Ball, Bright Earth, p. 206.

  3. J. Harvey, Story of Black, p. 25.

  4. Quoted in E. Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p. 78.

  5. Pastoureau, Black, pp. 26, 95–6.

  6. Ibid., p. 102.

  7. L. R. Poos, A Rural Society After the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 21.

  8. Pastoureau, Black, p. 135.

  9. Black has remained popular—with most people at least: Oscar Wilde wrote to the Daily Telegraph in 1891 to complain of this “black uniform . . . a gloomy, drab, and depressing color.”

  10. Quoted in S. Holtham and F. Moran, “Five Ways to Look at Malevich’s Black Square,” Tate Blog. Available at: www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/five-ways-look-Malevich-Black-Square (accessed Oct. 8, 2015).

  Kohl

  1. T. Whittemore, “The Sawâma Cemetries,” in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct. 1914), pp. 246–7.

  2. R. Kreston, “Ophthalmology of the Pharaohs: Antimicrobial Kohl Eyeliner in Ancient Egypt,” Discovery Magazine (Apr. 2012). Available at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2012/04/20/o
phthalmology-of-the-pharaohs/ (accessed Sept. 24, 2015).

  3. Ibid.

  4. K. Ravilious, “Cleopatra’s Eye Makeup Warded Off Infections?,” National Geographic News (Jan. 15, 2010). Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/ 100114- cleopatra-eye-makeup-ancient-egyptians/ (accessed Sept. 24, 2015); Kreston, “Ophthalmology of the Pharaohs.”

  Payne’s gray

  1. Quoted in A. Banerji, Writing History in the Soviet Union: Making the Past Work (New Delhi: Esha Béteille, 2008), p. 161.

  2. B. S. Long, “William Payne: Water-Color Painter Working 1776–1830,” in Walker’s Quarterly, No. 6 (Jan. 1922). Available at: https://archive.org/stream/williampaynewate 00longuoft, pp. 3–13.

  3. Quoted in ibid., pp. 6–8.

  Obsidian

  1. British Museum, “Dr. Dee’s Mirror,” www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/d/dr_dees_mirror.aspx (accessed 6 Oct. 2015).

  2. J. Harvey, The Story of Black (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), p. 19.

  3. British Museum, “Dr. Dee’s Mirror.”

  4. C. H. Josten, “An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 28 (1965), p. 249. Dee missed some that had been concealed in a secret drawer. When these were discovered after his death a kitchen maid began using them to line her pie dishes. Miraculously enough, some of the papers did survive the flames and pie crusts, including Dee’s pitiable account of this destruction—he calls it a holocaust. A full transcript of this section can be found in ibid., pp. 223–57.

  5. Pastoureau, Black, pp. 137–9.

  6. J. A. Darling, “Mass Inhumation and the Execution of Witches in the American Southwest,” in American Anthropologist, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Sept. 1998), p. 738; See also S. F. Hodgson, “Obsidian, Sacred Glass from the California Sky,” in Piccardi and Masse (eds.), Myth and Geology, pp. 295–314.

  7. R. Gulley, The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology (New York: Visionary Living, 2009), p. 122; British Museum, “Dr. Dee’s Mirror.”

  Ink

  1. Translation from UCL online; see: ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/ptahhotep.html.

  2. Delamare and Guineau, Color, pp. 24–5.

  3. Ibid., p. 25.

  4. C. C Pines, “The Story of Ink,” in The American Journal of Police Science, Vol. 2, No. 4. (July/Aug. 1931), p. 291.

  5. Finlay, Color, p. 99.

  6. Pastoureau, Black, p. 117.

  7. Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, The Iron Gall Ink Website. Available at: http://irongallink.org/igi_indexc752.html (accessed Sept. 29, 2015), p. 102.

  8. Delamare and Guineau, Color, p. 141.

  9. Finlay, Color, p. 102.

  10. Bucklow, Alchemy of Paint, pp. 40–1.

  Charcoal

  1. P. G. Bahn and J. Vertut, Journey Through the Ice Age (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), p. 22.

  2. M. Rose, “‘Look, Daddy, Oxen!’: The Cave Art of Altamira,” in Archaeology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (May/June 2000), pp. 68–9.

  3. H. Honour and J. Flemming, A World Historyof Art (London: Laurence King, 2005), p. 27; Bahn and Vertut, Journey Through the Ice Age, p. 17.

  4. Honour and Flemming, A World History of Art, pp. 27–8.

  5. A. Bhatia, “Why Moths Lost Their Spots, and Cats Don’t Like Milk: Tales of Evolution in Our Time,” in Wired (May 2011).

  Jet

  1. A. L. Luthi, Sentimental Jewelery: Antique Jewels of Love and Sorrow (Gosport: Ashford Colour Press, 2007), p. 19.

  2. J. Munby, “A Figure of Jet from Westmorland,” in Britannia, Vol . 6 (1975), p. 217.

  3. Luthi, Sentimental Jewelery, p. 17.

  4. L. Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: Routledge Revivals, 2010), p. 129.

  5. Quoted ibid., p. 130.

  6. Ibid., p. 129.

  Melanin

  1. It has been estimated that incidences of skin cancer among white people double for every 10-degree decrease in latitude.

  2. R. Kittles, “Nature, Origin, and Variation of Human Pigmentation,” in Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Sept. 1995), p. 40.

  3. Harvey, Story of Black, pp. 20–1.

  4. Pastoureau, Black, pp. 37–8.

  5. Quoted in Knowles (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p. 417.

  6. Quoted in Harvey, Story of Black, p. 23.

  7. Quoted in M. Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Pimlico, 2000), p. 230.

  Pitch black

  1. Ancient Greeks referred to the “black Nyx,” and she could also be described as “black-winged” or “sable-vestured.” Over a millennium later, Shakespeare drew on startlingly similar imagery: he called it “sable Night” and referred to its “black mantle.”

  2. Pastoureau, Black, pp. 21, 36.

  3. Harvey, Story of Black, pp. 29, 32. Defying her frightening appearance, if Kali’s devotees feel she has failed them, they can visit her temples in order to fling, in place of garlands and incense, curses and shit.

  4. Quoted ibid., p. 41.

  5. Pastoureau, Black, p. 28.

  6. Quoted in Harvey, Story of Black, p. 29.

  Bibliography and suggested further reading

  Those interested in learning more about the science of color and the heady rush of the aniline revolution should read Philip Ball’s Bright Earth and Simon Garfield’s Mauve. For those who want to be taken to find extraordinary colors across the world in eloquent companys look no further than Color by Victoria Finlay. And those with a particular interest in the dark side could do no better than reading Michel Pastoureau’s illuminating monograph Black—my favorite of his single-color books—and John Harvey’s The Story of Black.

  A

  Ainsworth, C. M., “Inks, from a Lecture Delivered to the Royal Society,” in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 70, No. 3637 (Aug. 1922), pp. 647–60.

  Albers, J., Interaction of Color. 50th Anniversary >Edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963).

  Alexander, H., “Michelle Obama: The ‘Nude’ Debate,” in the Telegraph (May 19, 2010). Allaby, M., Plants: Food Medicine and Green Earth (New York: Facts on File, 2010).

  Allen, N., “Judge to Decide who Owns £250 Million Bahia Emerald,” in the Telegraph (Sept. 24, 2010).

  Aristotle, Complete Works (New York: Delphi Classics, 2013).

  Alter, A. L., Drunk Tank Pink, and Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel and Behave (London: Oneworld, 2013).

  B

  Bahn, P. G., and J. Vertut, Journey Through the Ice Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

  Balfour-Paul, J., Deeper Than Indigo: Tracing Thomas Machell, Forgotten Explorer (Surbiton: Medina, 2015).

  Balfour-Paul, J., Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans (London: British Museum Press, 2000).

  Ball, P., Bright Earth: The Invention of Color (London: Vintage, 2008).

  Banerji, A., Writing History in the Soviet Union: Making the Past Work (New Delhi: Esha Béteille, 2008).

  Bartrip, P. W. J., “How Green Was My Valence? Environmental Arsenic Poisoning and the Victorian Domestic Ideal,” in The English Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 433 (Sept.1994).

  Barzini, L., Pekin to Paris: An Account of Prince Borghese’s Journey Across Two Continents in a Motor-Car. Trans. L. P. de Castelvecchio (London: E. Grant Richards, 1907).

  Batchelor, D., Chromophobia (London: Reaktion Books, 2000).

  Baum, P. F. (trans.), Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963).

  Beck, C. W., “Amber in Archaeology,” in Archaeology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan. 1970), pp. 7–11.

  Bemis, E., The Dyers Companion. Reprinted from 2nd edition (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,1973).

  Berger, K., “Ingenious: Mazviita
Chirimuuta,” in Nautilus (July 2005).

  Bessborough, Earl of (ed.), Georgiana: Extracts from the Correspondence of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: John Murray, 1955).

  Bhatia, A., “Why Moths Lost their Spots, and Cats Don’t Like Milk: Tales of Evolution in Our Time,” in Wired (May 2011).

  Billinge, R., and L. Campbell, “The Infra-Red Reflectograms of Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and His Wife Giovanna Cenami(?),” in National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol. 16 (1995), pp. 47–60.

  Blau, R., “The Light Therapeutic,” in Intelligent Life (May/June 2014), pp. 62–71.

  Blumberg, J., “A Brief History of the Amber Room,” Smithsonian.com (July 31, 2007).

  Bolton, E., Lichens for Vegetable Dyeing (McMinnville, OR: Robin & Russ, 1991).

  Bornell, B., “The Long, Strange Saga of the 180,000-Carat Emerald: The Bahia Emerald’s Twist-Filled History,” in Bloomberg Businessweek (Mar. 6, 2015).

  Brachfeld, A., and M. Choate, Eat Your Food! Gastronomical Glory from Garden to Glut. (Colorado: Coastalfields, 2007).

  Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso. Trans. J. M. Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

  British Museum, “Dr. Dee’s Mirror.”

  Britnell, R. H., Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

  Broad, W. J., “Hair Analysis Deflates Napoleon Poisoning Theories,” in New York Times (June 10, 2008).

  Brody, J. E., “Ancient, Forgotten Plant Now ‘Grain of the Future,’” in New York Times (Oct. 16, 1984).

  Brunwald, G., “Laughter Was Life,” in New York Times (Oct. 2, 1966).

  Bucklow, S., The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages (London: Marion Boyars, 2012).

  Burdett, C., “Aestheticism and Decadence,” https://www.bk.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/aetheticism-and-decadence.

  Bureau of Indian Standards, “Flag Code of India.”

  Burrows, E. G., and M. Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999).