This year’s summer reading theme is Color Our World.
From the science behind rainbows to the cultural meanings of hues across the globe, color touches every part of our lives. “Color is a power which directly influences the soul,” said painter Wassily Kandinsky.
Colors play a vital role in our lives and how we respond to our surroundings. The colors you surround yourself with can influence your perspective and emotions. We can also associate memories and thoughts with certain colors. Designers have long believed that color can dramatically affect feelings, emotions, and choices we make.
Whether you’re curious about color in art, nature, fashion, or storytelling, here are some titles available in your Library collection, to spark your imagination and brighten your summer reading list.
Blue : In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color by Kai Kupferschmidt
A globe-trotting quest to find blue in the natural world–and to understand our collective obsession with this bewitching color.
A Century of Color in Design : 250 Innovative Objects and the Stories Behind Them by David Harrison
Color has the power to transform our relationship to an object. The last hundred years have yielded a wealth of new designs celebrating color, and new technologies to make them possible. At once curated anthology and chronological short-form history, this volume spotlights 250 iconic pieces spanning furniture, fabric, lighting, and decorative objects–from the Bauhaus F51 armchair to the 3D-printed Chubby teapot–that exemplify color’s ever-evolving role in the modern era of design.
Color Charts : A History by Anne Varichon
This book describes the many different methods and ingenious devices developed since the fifteenth century by doctors, naturalists, dyers, and painters to catalog fragments of colors. Varichon traces the emergence of modern color charts from a set of processes developed over the centuries in various contexts. She presents illuminating examples that bring this remarkable story to life, from ancient writings revealing attention to precise shade to contemporary designers’ color charts, dyers’ notebooks, and Werner’s famous color nomenclature. Varichon argues that color charts have linked generations of artists, artisans, scientists, industrialists, and merchants, and have played an essential and enduring role in the way societies think about color.
From Colour to Art by Monica Rotgans
The discovery of the 55 most significant colours in the existence of creative peoples from prehistory to the present. Written from the artist’s perspective you will explore or learn about red mercury, white lead, blue glass, black coal, and many other important colours.
Cook Color : A Rainbow of 100 Recipes by Maria Zizka
Zizka introduces readers to ideas from color theory and cooking sciences, explaining how to master food styling and cooking techniques to enhance and preserve color, without any artificial additives. But cooking by color isn’t just about looks; it is an approach that draws connections between aesthetics, seasonality, and flavor.
Full Spectrum : How the Science of Color Made Us Modern by Adam Rogers
Rogers explores the nature of color and exactly how we perceive, create, and utilize colors via an appealing mix of neuroscience, chemistry, physics, and culture. His discussion covers pigments (including ubiquitous titanium oxide found in paper, paint, and pharmaceutical products), an Asian beetle whose armor is “the whitest white in the world,” rainbows and prisms, wavelengths, Isaac Newton’s Opticks, how the brain and eye work together to understand color, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and art (Monet’s images of the Rouen Cathedral at different times and seasons, Mark Rothko’s abstract expressionist works).
The Gardener’s Palette : Creating Colour Harmony in the Garden by Jo Thompson
This book shares an entirely new way for home gardeners to confidently incorporate colour at home. Award-winning garden designer Thompson curates 100 evocative and fresh palettes, pairs them with beautiful images of professionally designed gardens, and breaks them down with charts showing the exact plants used. She also provides full growing specifications for every plant to allow home gardeners to successfully re-create these stunning gardens.
The History of Color : A Universe of Chromatic Phenomena by Neil Parkinson
This book explores the history of our understanding of color from the ancient world to the present, from Aristotle to Albers. Interspersed in the historical story are thematic essays that explore how color has been used across a wide range of disciplines and fields: in belief, commerce, language, nature, food, wellness, printing, and music.
Living in Color : Color in Contemporary Interior Design
An inspirational visual journey along the color spectrum, brought to life via the best contemporary residential interior design. Tap into the growing trend for injecting color into home décor with this elegant, thoughtful selection of interiors in every shade and hue. Organised by color — from the purest white to the deepest black, from the hottest pinks, oranges, and reds, to the coolest greens and tranquil blues in between — Living in Color explores and celebrates the current trend for vivid accents and vibrant transformations of our domestic spaces, whatever their size and wherever their location.
Personal Color : The Definitive Guide to Finding and Wearing your Best Colors by Anuschka Rees
The definitive modern guide to finding your season and best colors, from the author of The Curated Closet. Why do some colors look radiant and effortless on one person but completely wash out another? The answer is color theory. In this book you’ll harness the power of color theory to identify your color season and discover which shades best harmonize with your unique skin tone, hair, and eye color to make your natural beauty shine.
Pink : The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau
Pink has such powerful associations today that it’s hard to imagine the color could ever have meant anything different. But it’s only since the introduction of the Barbie doll in 1959 that pink has become decisively feminized. Indeed, in the eighteenth century, pink was frequently masculine, and the color has signified many things beyond gender over the course of its long history–from the prim to the vulgar, and from the romantic to the eccentric. In this richly illustrated book, Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colors, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of pink in the West, from antiquity to today.
The Rainbow Home : Over 200 Ideas and Tips for Adding Color to Your Home by Laura Perryman
Perryman (The Color Bible), director of the design consultancy Colour of Saying, encourages readers to decorate with bright, vivid hues in this scintillating interior design manual. Her “ten steps to a colorful home” include creating a mood board, starting small with “a brightly colored vase or tablecloth,” and then getting bolder with a vibrant statement chair or rug surrounded by items of lighter, complementary colors. Profiling individuals with brightly hued homes, she shows how accessory shop owner Polly Chromatic imbued her house with a sense of play by painting polka dots throughout the entryway and installing a rainbow-striped skylight in her bedroom. The main draw, however, are the bountiful photos illustrating creative ways to spruce up each room of the house.
The Universe in 100 Colors : Weird and Wonderful Colors from Science and Nature by Tyler Thrasher
This book aims to highlight 100 incredibly interesting colors that the average human could live their life unaware of. These colors exist in the strangest of places, and serve the most specific functions in nature, or were human-made with one particular goal in mind.
—Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian