Color
A Natural History of the Palette
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Narrated by:
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Victoria Finlay
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By:
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Victoria Finlay
About this listen
In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself.
How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood wear Lincoln green? In Color, Finlay explores the physical materials that color our world, such as precious minerals and insect blood, as well as the social and political meanings that color has carried through time.
Roman emperors used to wear togas dyed with a purple color that was made from an odorous Lebanese shellfish—which probably meant their scent preceded them. In the eighteenth century, black dye was called logwood and grew along the Spanish Main. Some of the first indigo plantations were started in America, amazingly enough, by a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza. And the popular van Gogh painting White Roses at Washington’s National Gallery had to be renamed after a researcher discovered that the flowers were originally done in a pink paint that had faded nearly a century ago. Color is full of extraordinary people, events, and anecdotes—painted all the more dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style.
Embark upon a thrilling adventure with this intrepid journalist as she travels on a donkey along ancient silk trade routes; with the Phoenicians sailing the Mediterranean in search of a special purple shell that garners wealth, sustenance, and prestige; with modern Chilean farmers breeding and bleeding insects for their viscous red blood. The colors that craft our world have never looked so bright.
©2002 Victoria Finlay (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.
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Dull, suggestions for better alternatives
- By J. Natael on 08-07-13
By: Alain de Botton
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Mudlark
- In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames
- By: Lara Maiklem
- Narrated by: Xanthe Elbrick
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A quixotic journey through London's past, Mudlark plumbs the banks of the Thames to reveal the stories hidden behind the archaeological remnants of an ancient city. Long heralded as a city treasure herself, expert "mudlarker" Lara Maiklem is uniquely trained in the art of seeking. Tirelessly trekking across miles of the Thames' muddy shores, where others only see the detritus of city life, Maiklem unearths evidence of England's captivating, if sometimes murky, history - with some objects dating back to 43 AD, when London was but an outpost of the Roman Empire.
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thoroughly enjoyed
- By j on 11-21-20
By: Lara Maiklem
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At Home
- A Short History of Private Life
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.”
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Bryson does it again
- By Robert on 10-15-10
By: Bill Bryson
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The Seine
- The River That Made Paris
- By: Elaine Sciolino
- Narrated by: Elaine Sciolino
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Elaine Sciolino came to Paris as a young foreign correspondent and was seduced by a river. In The Seine, she tells the story of that river from its source on a remote plateau of Burgundy to the wide estuary where its waters meet the sea, and the cities, tributaries, islands, ports, and bridges in between.
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Disappointed
- By Nom de Guerre on 08-06-21
By: Elaine Sciolino
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Periodic Tales
- A Cultural History of the Elements, From Arsenic to Zinc
- By: Hugh Aldersey-Williams
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
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Interesting but Rambling
- By Carolyn on 08-24-15
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The Fossil Hunter
- Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World
- By: Shelley Emling
- Narrated by: Rachael Beresford
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Anning was only 12 years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton - of an ichthyosaur - while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct.
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Well researched
- By Nick Cox on 11-14-20
By: Shelley Emling
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Women's Work
- The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
- By: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.
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Respectful treatment of the archeological record.
- By fiberflair on 02-23-21
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The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic
- The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive
- By: Martín Prechtel
- Narrated by: Martín Prechtel
- Length: 18 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic is both an epic story and a cry to the heart of humanity based on the author’s realization that human survival depends on keeping alive the seeds of our “original forgotten spiritual excellence.” Prechtel relates our current state of ecological crisis to the rapid disappearance of biodiversity, indigenous cultures, and shared human values. He demonstrates how real human culture is exterminated when real (not genetically modified) seeds are lost.
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Absolutely awesome and delicious!
- By Joange on 08-18-21
By: Martín Prechtel
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Sanshiro
- Penguin Classics
- By: Natsume Soseki, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
- Narrated by: Andrew Koji
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro's doomed innocence, the novel comes to life. Sanshiro is also penetrating social and cultural commentary.
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This story had no point.
- By icelandicponies on 12-30-21
By: Natsume Soseki, and others
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A Russian Journal
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.
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Extremely Interesting
- By Jean on 12-04-14
By: John Steinbeck
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Sovietistan
- Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
- By: Erika Fatland
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.
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Outstanding book
- By George MP on 04-24-22
By: Erika Fatland
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Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see. The experimental palettes of painting, the advent of the color photograph, Technicolor pictures, color printing, and so on have created a vivid and vibrant continuum. These ways of representing reality in “living color” echo our evolutionary reliance on and indeed privileging of color as a complex and vital form of consumption, classification, and creation. It’s everywhere we look, yet do we really know much of anything about it?
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From kelly green to millennial pink, our world is graced with a richness of colors. But our human-made colors haven’t always matched nature’s kaleidoscopic array. To reach those brightest heights required millennia of remarkable innovation and a fascinating exchange of ideas between science and craft that’s allowed for the most luminous manifestations of our built and adorned world. In Full Spectrum, Rogers takes us on that globe-trotting journey, tracing an arc from the earliest humans to our digitized, synthesized present and future.
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Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings - some long, some short - that taken together form a group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene.
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needs pictures
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Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire into the homogenous and disposable uniforms popularized by fast-fashion brands.
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Horrors of the industrial revolution Continued
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The Golden Thread
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From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization - from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole).
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Excellent for those interested in textiles
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On Color
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Our lives are saturated by color. We live in a world of colors, and color marks our psychological and social existence. But for all color's ubiquity, we don't know much about it. Authors David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing offer a fresh and imaginative exploration of one of the most intriguing and least-understood aspects of everyday experience.
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Wow! Great.
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Get the Picture
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An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker’s existence was upended when she wandered into the art world—and couldn’t look away. Intrigued by artists who hyperventilate around their favorite colors and art fiends who max out credit cards to show hunks of metal they think can change the world, Bosker grew fixated on understanding why art matters and how she—or any of us—could engage with it more deeply.
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Rough Start - Great Conclusion
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A Degree in a Book: Art History
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Story
Spanning from the classical sculpture of Ancient Rome to contemporary performance art, this guide provides a rich overview of art history, covering many topics explored in a history of art degrees.
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Better for Beginners
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Hilma af Klint
- A Biography
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.
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Ruined by narration
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-23-23
By: Julia Voss, and others
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Fibershed
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.
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Interested In Sustainable Life, Not Just Food?
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The Story of Art Without Men
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States, and the artist who really invented the "readymade." Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s.
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Great book, no pdf?
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What listeners say about Color
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Patrick White
- 02-12-24
A lovely walk though colours and where they were found throughout history. I will listen to this again.
Historical and personal information combined to make an interesting story. I will listen to this again.
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- Jaime Manzo
- 07-15-23
amazing
Loved it, wish there was multiple volumes. It is intriguing beyond imagination and I am sure there was plenty more to share. I am now on my personal journey to learn MORE.
Thank you!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Eve
- 09-22-24
Tremendous book
Mixing, science, and brilliant storytelling, this author goes through the history of color, what colors are physically made of, historical techniques used,, and The chemicals used to create them. I recommend this to anyone who is a painter, a fabric artist, historian, or just plain curious.
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- Snoopy
- 03-31-23
Well Researched
Just as good as her book Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World. Color is a worthy read if you're an artist or not. Part history, part travelogue, she takes you on an enjoyable ride with her through the history of colors.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Harriet
- 05-11-23
Interesting survey of one woman search for the source of the rainbow!
Well written and well narrated, this is a great break from sensational fiction or dry dull science.
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- Jacquelyne
- 09-08-23
Vibrant Learning
I enjoyed the lively tales of the hues. It’s a great account of historic happenings set to the tune our human desire for color. What a drive for control and stratification of the social order. Fantastic insight.
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- Esio Trot
- 07-26-23
A scrumptious, colorful adventure. Must read
Fabulous. Read this book if you love adventure, history, anthropology, have eyes, do not have eyes, want to fall deeply in nerd love with a subject or be fascinating at dinner parties
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-17-24
Held my attention
I listened to this whole book while painting. It’s got a nice combination of storytelling and facts.
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- R Fontanes
- 04-21-24
New favorite book
The stories, descriptions, history and tranquil yet enthusiastic voice of the narrator made this a MUST. I will listen to it again as I loved it so much. I didn’t expect ‘Color’ to capture and captivate my imagination… but I now want to see so many more things with my own eyes: maybe the frosted iceberg blues creaking and cracking or the great art with splashes of paints on canvases described so lovingly. Will gladly listen to the textile and jewels book as well.
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- Anita Lockring
- 01-21-24
This book is wonderful!
I just finished listening to the audiobook “Color”. I absolutely loved it. It was a perfect companion while painting. A fascinating exploration of the history of and stories behind the pigments paired with a trip around the world! The author reading added to the awesomeness!
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1 person found this helpful