Blue : a history of the color as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky Cover Image

Book

Blue : a history of the color as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky / by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond ; illustrated by Daniel Minter.

ISBN: 9781984894366
ISBN: 1984894366
ISBN: 9781984894373
ISBN: 1984894374
Physical Description: 1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 29 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2022]
Copyright: &copy;2022

Brew-Hammond, Nana Ekua, (author.). Minter, Daniel, (illustrator.).

Summary:

This picture book follows one color's journey throughout history -- from ancient Afghan painters to 1905, when a chemical blue dye was created -- and around the world, as it becomes the blue we know today.

"For centuries, blue powders and dyes were some of the most sought-after materials in the world. Ancient Afghan painters ground mass quantities of sapphire rocks to use for their paints, while snails were harvested in Eurasia for the tiny amounts of blue that their bodies would release. And then there was indigo, which was so valuable that American plantations grew it as a cash crop on the backs of African slaves. It wasn't until 1905, when Adolf von Baeyer created a chemical blue dye, that blue could be used for anything and everything--most notably that uniform of workers everywhere, blue jeans"--Amazon.