Victoria Finlay (Author of Color)

Victoria Finlay鈥檚 Followers (261)

Victoria Finlay

Born

November 19, 1964

Website

Twitter

Genre

Nonfiction, History

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Victoria Finlay is a writer and journalist, known for her books on colour and jewels. Her most famous book is Colour: Travels Through The Paint Box.

(from Wikipedia)

I studied Social Anthropology at St Andrews University, Scotland and William & Mary College, Virginia, after spending time in Himalayan India, teaching in a Tibetan refugee camp and realising how amazing it was to learn about different cultures. My first job was as a management trainee with Reuters, in London and Scandinavia, but I had a dream to be a real news journalist, writing about people鈥檚 lives at times of drama and trauma. So I left to study journalism for a three month diploma at the London College of Printing.

When I was there, being told just how hard it would be to fin Victoria Finlay is a writer and journalist, known for her books on colour and jewels. Her most famous book is Colour: Travels Through The Paint Box.

(from Wikipedia)

I studied Social Anthropology at St Andrews University, Scotland and William & Mary College, Virginia, after spending time in Himalayan India, teaching in a Tibetan refugee camp and realising how amazing it was to learn about different cultures. My first job was as a management trainee with Reuters, in London and Scandinavia, but I had a dream to be a real news journalist, writing about people鈥檚 lives at times of drama and trauma. So I left to study journalism for a three month diploma at the London College of Printing.

When I was there, being told just how hard it would be to find a job, a fellow student asked me where, if I could choose any newspaper or magazine in the world, I would most like to work. I still remember the street we were walking along in south London, as my answer, quite unplanned, would change my life. I said: 鈥淗ong Kong, South China Morning Post, during the Handover鈥�. At that time I had neither visited Hong Kong nor ever read The South China Morning Post. However, I had spoken my wish, so I applied as an intern, and spent the next 12 years in Hong Kong writing for The Hong Kong Standard, RTHK (briefly) and finally The South China Morning Post, as news reporter, then arts editor.

I left to fulfil another wish, which was to write a book about where colours came from 鈥� a subject that had interested me ever since I was eight years old and heard that we could no longer make the beautiful blue glass of Chartres Cathedral. Two years later, in 2002, that was published as Colour, Travels through the Paintbox, by Sceptre (and Color: the Natural History of the Palette, by Ballantine in the US). My second book, Jewels: A Secret History, followed in 2004. Since then I have returned to the UK, got married (the two were connected), and have spent the past few years working on development programmes (another wish) with my husband, through his charity, ARC. And now I am venturing 鈥� very, very slowly 鈥� into the world of fiction-writing. In April 2014 my first published short story was published in a book called The Stories of the Stranger: a reimagining of some of the stories that just about every religion and community has, about looking after people you don鈥檛 know. In 2014 my book The Brilliant History of Color in Art was published by Getty Publications in LA, and was named the Huffington Post鈥檚 top art book for that year.

One of the surprising things that writing the books led me to was being invited onto the BBC Radio 4 programme The Museum of Curiosities a couple of years ago. On the pilot I talked about purple, and then in the first series I was asked to propose Pliny the Elder (I have a thing about Pliny the Elder) to be one of the first entries into the Museum of Curiosity. I give lots of talks, and write for several publications including Orion, Apollo, The Independent, The Smithsonian Magazine and The South China Morning Post. ...more

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Victoria Finlay鈥檚 books

Average rating: 3.82 · 73,965 ratings · 1,353 reviews · 11 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	Color: A Natural History of the Palette 3.81 avg rating — 70,653 ratings — published 2003 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, He Yun (Translator), Jay Ramsay (Translator) 4.37 avg rating — 6,202 ratings — published 1522 — 363 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Jewels: A Secret History 4.14 avg rating — 1,600 ratings — published 2006 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World 4.25 avg rating — 830 ratings — published 2021 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Brilliant History of Color in Art 4.20 avg rating — 765 ratings — published 2014 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour: The Harvard Art Museums' Forbes Pigment Collection by Victoria Finlay (Foreword), Narayan Khandekar (Introduction), Kingston Trinder (Contributor) 4.33 avg rating — 48 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Faith in Conservation: New Approaches to Religions and the Environment by Martin Palmer, Victoria Finlay 4.16 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 2003 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I wish I had a Brother it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World - Library Edition by Victoria Finlay, Carla Kissane (Narrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Masterpiece 2016 London by Michael Prodger, Lauren Prakke, Victoria Finlay 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Victoria Finlay (?)

“If Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keat's 'purple-stained mouth', or perhaps even of Homer's dangerously wine-dark sea.”
― Victoria Finlay

tags: bacchus, colour, purple, wine

42 likes

“...almost every pearl on sale today was born of the planned sexual violation of a small creature, and that considerable suffering hangs on those necklace strings.”
― Victoria Finlay, Jewels: A Secret History

tags: animal-cruelty, jewelry

20 likes

“I realized it was like a dating agency: the ions are the lost souls looking for mates; the electrolyte is the agency that can help them find each other.”
― Victoria Finlay, Jewels: A Secret History

tags: chemistry

11 likes

See all Victoria Finlay's quotes »

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