The Secret Lives of Colour
The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture.
Kassia St. Clair
Writer, cultural historian and consultant Kassia St. Clair is based in London. Her first book, The Secret Lives of Colour, is a top-ten bestseller, was selected as Radio 4′s Book of the Week and has been translated into twenty languages. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Sunday Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award.
An accomplished speaker, Kassia has given talks at international venues including the Dallas Art Museum, Hay Festival, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Soho House. She is a frequent contributor to NPR’s Marketplace and has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 5 Live and CNN to talk about the cultural history of pigments, dyes, hues and textiles. In 2018 she collaborated with Color Factory to create an exhibit at their site in New York.
Credits
Author: Kassia St. Clair
Publisher: John Murray Press
Country: United Kingdom
Photographs: © Kassia St. Clair / ©John Murray Press
