Do or dye: How humans chased colour and found it

A new book explores how dyes were created through millennia, and the economic and social contexts of the hues that shade our world.

How did we “find” colour, which shades have we lost, and how did synthetic dyes change it all?

Albrecht Durer’s The Madonna with the Iris (1508), painted with vermillion made from the Kermes vermilio insect. Cardinal Agostino Pallavicini, in robes painted with cochineal, by Anthony van Dyck (c. 1621). (Bridgeman Images; Getty Museum Collection)

Textile designer and researcher Lauren MacDonald, 33, spent three years working on the book she published last year, and it has some of the answers. In Pursuit of Color: From Fungi to Fossil Fuels – Uncovering the Origins of the World’s Most Famous Dyes, explores the economic and social contexts of the hues that shade our world.

It draws on work she