The Secret Lives of Color

June 19, 2017
London-based writer St. Clair delivers a mix of science, humor, and art history in this collection of bite-size essays on the cultural and social lore of colors based on her column in British Elle Decoration. The author arranges her color commentary in blocks: color entries start with white and end with black; in between, St. Clair tells the stories of colors unglamorous (umber) and obscure (gamboge) with those that kill (orpiment pigment is around 60% arsenic) or change (verdigris is the green patina that results when copper is exposed to air). She explores etymologies (buff from buffalo) and sprinkles wit (taupe, French for mole, is “browner than a mole had a right to be”) throughout the collection. Her sentences guarantee sustained reading: “Balthasar Gérard was the Lee Harvey Oswald of his day”; the word heliotrope fills “the mouth like a rich, buttery sauce.” St. Clair’s rhetoric beautifies the form of the brief essay.

September 1, 2017
London-based journalist St. Clair sports a fetishistic love of colormore specifically, of the way color is described and translated across linguistic barriers. She first fell in lust while studying fashion and lifestyle trends of the eighteenth century. St. Clair found descriptions of color and hue downright titillating. In this digestible anthology of chromatic origin stories, readers have a chance to join in St. Clair's obsession. The collection of informative essays is organized by color family. For example, readers will learn about the vast differences between saffron, amber, and ginger in quick succession. Visual artists will relish the scientific exploration of pigments and stains, but every reader will enjoy the ample supply of answers to some of life's biggest questions, such as: Which orange came first, the color or the fruit? (The fruit.) Why do we call it pitch black? (Complete darkness tends to throw us off balance.) Including an index and suggested further reading, The Secret Lives of Color holds surprise and satisfaction at every striation of the rainbow.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)