Michael: Alright Kevin, quick question. If you had to guess the most dramatic, high-stakes story behind any color in the art store, what would you pick? Kevin: Oh, that’s easy. It has to be Tyrian Purple. The one made from thousands of rotting sea snails, worn by Roman emperors. It screams drama, power, and probably a really bad smell. Michael: An excellent and very logical guess! But what if I told you the story of the humble, boring, gray pencil involves state secrets, international espionage, and smuggling rings with laws punishable by death? Kevin: No way. The pencil? The thing I chew on when I'm bored? Get out of here. Michael: It's just one of the incredible revelations in Victoria Finlay's book, Color: Travels Through the Paintbox. And what's amazing is that her whole quest started from a single, almost magical childhood memory. She was at Chartres Cathedral with her father, who pointed to the brilliant blue stained-glass windows and told her the secret to making that specific blue was lost forever. Kevin: Wow, okay. A lost, ancient blue I can get behind. That's a great mystery. But smuggling rings for pencils? You have to start there. Michael: We will get there, I promise. But to really understand the power of color, we have to go back way, way further. Before pencils, before even purple. We have to go back to the very first color humanity ever used: ochre.

Kevin: Ochre. You mean... red dirt, basically? How can dirt have a dramatic story? Michael: That’s the exact question Finlay sets out to answer. We think of it as just a pigment, but for many ancient cultures, especially in Aboriginal Australia, it wasn't just dirt. It was a life force. It was the land itself. She tells this incredible story from the 1860s about the "Ochre Wars." Kevin: Ochre Wars? Okay, you have my attention. Michael: There was a sacred ochre mine called Bookartoo in South Australia. For thousands of years, the Diyari people would make a thousand-mile round-trip pilgrimage on foot to collect this specific red ochre. It was essential for their ceremonies, for trade, for everything. Kevin: A thousand miles? On foot? What made that specific dirt so important? Michael: That's the crux of it. When white farmers settled the area, conflict erupted. The Diyari would take sheep for their long journey, the farmers would retaliate. It got bloody. The colonial administration, in a brilliant moment of cultural cluelessness, decided to solve the problem. They thought, "They want red dirt? We'll give them red dirt." So they mined four tons of a different ochre from another tribe's land, shipped it to the Diyari, and had missionaries hand it out. Kevin: Let me guess. It didn't go over well. Michael: Not at all. The Diyari completely rejected it. A journalist at the time, T.A. Masey, wrote that the new ochre just wasn't the same. It didn't have the right shine, the right feel. He said it "did not give them that much-coveted shiny appearance that filled them with delight and admiration." It lacked luster. Kevin: Luster... so it's like the difference between a cheap, mass-produced plastic toy and a hand-carved wooden one. One is just an object, but the other has a story, a soul. Michael: That is a perfect analogy. The Bookartoo ochre wasn't just a material; it was their connection to the Dreaming, their creation story. It was sacred. Finlay speaks with an Aboriginal curator, Hetty Perkins, who explains this beautifully. Perkins puts her hand on a piece of paper on a table and says, "This paper is a blanket, and this table is Australia. You lift the paper, and it’s all underneath." The paintings, the colors, they're just the surface. The real meaning, the country, is underneath. Kevin: Wow. So for them, color isn't just applied to the world, it is the world. That's a completely different way of seeing. Michael: Exactly. It's not a substance, it's an essence. And that's the perfect bridge to our next set of colors, which are all about the opposite: about absence, shadows, and the surprising drama of the mundane.

Kevin: Okay, so ochre is this deep, spiritual, ancient thing. It feels elemental. But the book is called Color. What about black and brown? They feel more like... the absence of color. How do they fit into this grand, adventurous story? Michael: Finlay was initially skeptical too, but she uncovers that black is where painting, in a way, begins. She recounts this beautiful classical legend from Pliny the Elder about the origin of painting. It wasn't about capturing a vibrant landscape. It was about love and loss. Kevin: Hold on. The first painting was basically an act of love and loss? Michael: According to the legend, yes. A young Corinthian woman was saying goodbye to her lover, who was going on a long journey. As he stood by candlelight, she saw his shadow on the wall. And in a moment of inspiration, she grabbed a piece of charcoal from the fire and traced his silhouette, so she could keep a part of him with her. Kevin: That's incredibly poetic. So art begins not with capturing color, but with capturing an absence, a shadow. And with the most basic material imaginable—a burnt stick. Michael: Exactly. It’s about presence and absence. And that impermanence is key. Think of the oldest paintings we know, the cave paintings at Lascaux or Chauvet. They're made with charcoal and ochre, but they're so fragile. Finlay notes that the paintings at Lascaux are now fading just from the moisture of human breath. They are, as she says, "painted with ashes and they are returning to dust." Kevin: Which brings us back to the pencil. How did we get from a burnt stick to the thing I have on my desk? You promised me espionage. Michael: Right! So, fast forward to 1565 in Borrowdale, England. A massive deposit of pure, solid graphite was discovered after a storm uprooted a tree. They called it 'wad' or 'black lead.' It was so pure you could literally just saw off a piece, wrap it in string, and write with it. Kevin: So it was just lying there? Why was that a big deal? Michael: Because this graphite had two very important uses. It was great for marking sheep, sure. But it was also the perfect material for lining the molds for cannonballs. It could withstand the heat and made the cannonballs smoother and more accurate. Kevin: Ah, so it became a strategic military resource. That's where the drama comes from. Michael: Precisely. Suddenly, this lump of black rock was a matter of national security for England. The Crown took over the mine. They flooded it between operations to prevent theft. They had armed guards patrolling it, and smugglers caught with 'black lead' could be publicly whipped, imprisoned, or even transported to the colonies. It was a massive, high-stakes operation. Kevin: All for graphite. That's insane. So England had a monopoly on the world's best pencils? Michael: They had a monopoly on the world's best graphite. And this drove other nations, especially Napoleon's France, absolutely crazy. They were at war with Britain and couldn't get their hands on the good stuff. So, in 1794, Napoleon tasked a scientist named Nicolas-Jacques Conté to find a solution. Conté figured out how to grind up lower-quality graphite dust, mix it with clay, and fire it in a kiln. Kevin: Wait, so he basically invented the modern pencil lead? Michael: He did! And by varying the amount of clay, he could create different grades of hardness and softness—the H and B scale we still use today. It was a huge breakthrough, born entirely out of military and economic necessity. The humble pencil is a child of war and espionage.

Kevin: It's incredible. In one episode, we've gone from a sacred red earth that represents the soul of a people, to a lump of black carbon that nations went to war over. The stories are so much bigger than the colors themselves. Michael: That's the core of Victoria Finlay's book. She shows that every color in the paintbox isn't just a pigment; it's a condensed history of human desire, spirituality, conflict, and innovation. Finlay herself says she started her journey looking for purity, for a "Garden of Eden" of color, but instead, she found "more corruption, poisonings, wars and politics than even the Medicis could have appreciated." Kevin: And that's what makes the book so compelling, even for people who aren't artists. It's not about how to mix colors; it's about what those colors mean. It's about the human stories baked into them. Some of the reader reviews are a bit divided on her travelogue style, but I think hearing about her personal journey to these places is what makes the history feel so alive. Michael: I agree. It connects the abstract history to a tangible, human quest. From a piece of ochre that connects you to an artist 5,000 years ago, to the graphite in your pencil that carries a history of smuggling and revolution. Color is the place, as the artist Cézanne said, where our brain and the universe meet. Kevin: It really makes you look at everything differently. The next time you see a red brick building or just scribble something with a pencil, you have to wonder... what's its story? What wars were fought, what journeys were taken, just for that specific shade to exist right here, right now? Michael: A question worth asking. This is Aibrary, signing off.