The rarest colour’s in the world are captured in a new book

An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour; The Harvard Art Museums, Forbes Pigment Collection, published by Atelier Éditions.

(Image credit: © Pascale Georgiev for Atelier Éditions)

last updated 8 October 2022

The Harvard Art Museums hold over 2500 of the world’s rarest pigments, from bits of Egyptian blue glass dating to 1,000 BCE to newly released fluorescent hues. Public access to the colour library has been restricted – until now, where, in An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour, the collection is excavated by Atelier Éditions in startling detail and vividity, through gradated colour-coded chapters.

Inside the gloriously retro, 60s-inspired rainbow hardback, we find an encyclopedic photobook of poised still lifes, where each phial, herb and pigment-filled container becomes a character, narrating the fascinating history of colour.

Former Fogg Art Museum director Edward Forbes started the collection at the turn of the 20th century, in the interest of preserving the early Italian paintings he had just begun to collect. Through the years, word of mouth helped the collection to grow into a vast apothecary of bottles and beakers as other art lovers and experts donated their own pigments. Continually growing, the collection helps experts worldwide to research and authenticate paintings.

*Madder Lake Straus.1600 Fezandie & Sperrle Inc, USA, 1936.*

In Cambridge, Forbes’ legacy thrives in the museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, where experts preserve masterworks for future generations and decipher the chemical makeup of paint and pottery glaze. As well as looking to the future, the pigments are a tinted window to the past, shedding light on the working methods and preferred materials of renowned artists. Studying them reveals the effort it took, in the days before synthetic pigments, to get colours just right.

We learn that green hues were entirely absent from cave paintings, and that popular sage-green wallpaper in the 19th century hastened many to their deaths, thanks to its reliance on arsenic-derived dyes. We come paper-close to Ultramarine, a vivid blue made from lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan, which was once more precious than gold.

As well as providing a reference guide to art conservators, this is a document for sore eyes, a graphic glossary of the colours that inject vibrancy into our art and world. A Rothko quote sums it up, swimming in a scarlet page, ‘There is only one thing I fear in my life, my friend; One day the black will swallow the red.’

Violet colored bottle. — Violet de Cobalt Straus. 1749 Lefranc & Cie, France, 1927.

Forbes Pigment Collection in blue colored. — From the chapter ‘Blue’, inside *An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour;  The Harvard Art Museums*, Forbes Pigment Collection, published by Atelier Éditions.

Green color flower like design. — Malachite, (polished) Straus. 536.

Small roll image. — Rokusho, A-0 No. 3 Straus. 800 Japan, 1931.

Small bottle in red color. — Toluidine Toner 16 T 01 Straus. 1657 Ansbacher-Siegle Corp., USA, undated.

From the chapter &lsquo;Red&rsquo;, inside An Atlas of Rare &amp; Familiar Colour. — From the chapter ‘Red’, inside *An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour;  The Harvard Art Museums*, Forbes Pigment Collection, published by Atelier Éditions.

Red colored bottle. — Kidney Haematite Straus. 1502.

Ball of Raw Indian Yellow Straus. 529 Charles Roberson & Co., United Kingdom, 1914.

Dragon&rsquo;s Blood in native reed Straus. — Dragon’s Blood in native reed Straus. 566.

From the chapter &lsquo;Black&rsquo;, inside An Atlas of Rare &amp; Familiar Colour — From the chapter ‘Black’, inside *An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour;  The Harvard Art Museums*, Forbes Pigment Collection, published by Atelier Éditions.

Information

An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour is a new publication from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums, published by Atelier Éditions. For more information, visit the Atelier Éditions website

Elly Parsons is the Digital Editor of Wallpaper*, where she oversees Wallpaper.com and its social platforms. She has been with the brand since 2015 in various roles, spending time as digital writer – specialising in art, technology and contemporary culture – and as deputy digital editor. She was shortlisted for a PPA Award in 2017, has written extensively for many publications, and has contributed to three books. She is a guest lecturer in digital journalism at Goldsmiths University, London, where she also holds a masters degree in creative writing. Now, her main areas of expertise include content strategy, audience engagement, and social media.