Although much has been written on the aesthetic value of color,
there are other values that adhere to it with economic and social
values among them. Through case studies of particular colors and
colored objects, this volume demonstrates just how complex the
history of color is by focusing on the diverse social and cultural
meanings of color; the trouble, pain, and suffering behind the
production and application of these colors; the difficult technical
processes for making and applying color; and the intricacy of
commercial exchanges and knowledge transfers as commodities and
techniques moved from one region to another. By emphasizing color's
materiality, the way in which it was produced, exchanged, and used
by artisans, artists, and craftspersons, contributors draw
attention to the disjuncture between the beauty of color and the
blood, sweat, and tears that went into its production, circulation,
and application as well as to the complicated and varied social
meanings attached to color within specific historical and social
contexts. This book captures color's global history with chapters
on indigo plantations in India and the American South, cochineal
production in colonial Oaxaca, the taste for brightly colored
Chinese objects in Europe, and the thriving trade in vermilion
between Europeans and Native Americans. To underscore the
complexity of the technical knowledge behind color production,
there are chapters on the 'discovery' of Prussian blue, Brazilian
feather techne, and wallpaper production. To sound the depths of
color's capacity for social and cultural meaning-making, there are
chapters that explore the significance of black ink in
Shakespeare's sonnets, red threads in women's needlework samplers,
blues in Mayan sacred statuary, and greens and yellows in colored
glass bracelets that were traded across the Arabian desert in the
late Middle Ages. The purpose of this book is to recover color's
complex-and sometimes morally troubling-past, and in doing so, to
restore a sense of wonder and appreciation for our colorful world.
With its nuanced and complex depiction of how color operated within
local contexts and moved across the globe, this book will appeal to
art historians, social and cultural historians, museum curators,
literary scholars, rhetoric scholars, and historians of science and
technology.
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