Color : A Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay
Random House Publishing Group
 9780812971422
0-8129-7142-6

Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors.For example: Cleopatra used saffron--a source of the color yellow--for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue "ultramarine".

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paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn't afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red--still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today--has come from the blood of insects.