Book Review: Color Charts

 

Color Charts: A History by Anne Vanchon is a beautiful compendium of color charts across various disciplines in which color codification is a consideration--dyes/paints/pigments, yes, but also some surprising examples like a 16th century color chart of urine for diagnosing disease and other maladies.

This book is a lavishly produced hefty tome--10"x11.5", hardcover, over an inch thick with 280+ full-color satin-finish pages, replete with numerous examples some reproduced for the first time outside of the archives which contain them. The text is deeply researched, illuminative and interesting; this is as much a reference text as a lush "coffee table"-style art book.

Highly recommend!