The Big Book of Natural Color

...begins in this vivifying way:

"Of all the precious minerals, beautiful landscapes, sights, experiences, and astonishing materials the world has to offer, it amazes me that paint can still exercise a power of wonder over the humand mind. Perhaps it is because paint is a vehicle for color, a conduit for chromatic concupiscence. More probably it's because paint has the power to cleanse, renew, and change our visual world: our walls and homes, cars and fufrniture, our faces and nails.
And paint has always been powerful. Socially, it used to be more influential than it is now. For tens of thousands of years it has been used to mark territory, cover faces, and decorate the otherwise humdrum paraphernalia of our lives..."

- Foreword by Kevin McCloud to a magnificent book titled "The Big Book of Natural Color" written by Elizabeth Hilliard and Stafford Cliff (Matson-Guptill Publications, New York).

The House notes:

The book is indeed big, the photography superb, but it is the thoughtful text that caught our eye and mind. This book may look and feel like a coffe table book, but it would be dangerous to judge it by its cover and dismiss it as yet another splash in the wide universe of ego-centered interior decorators.
It is meant for the avid art student, the eager home maker and any student of nature with a wish to tune in with the rest of the Natural World.
Its clear descriptions of processes and pigmentation will satisfy-not saturate- a curious mind, and its photography will inspire endless and timeless combinations of moods and feelings, mostly by teaching one ...how to look. Now we ask: Where would we be without Color TV?