Shade stories

Kassia St Clair

One of the earliest known recipes for a pink dye, written in Tuscany around 1480, promised “a beautiful rosy hue”. You only needed brazilwood, chalk, tartar and “if you can, the urine of an ass, but moderately. If you do not have ass urine, that of a drunk man will do.” An inauspicious start for a colour associated with romance. Michel Pastoureau is known for his excellent scholarly monographs on European colour history. The past 25 years have seen the publication of Blue, Black, Green, Red, Yellow and White. Pink is the first of his studies into a wider chromatic range that will include orange, purple, grey and brown. Pink is, like its forebears, a social history, organised first chronologically then into short thematic essays that explore different aspects of…

You're reading a preview of

Bbc History (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.