Pigment Analysis of Joyce’s Ulysses Blue: Ineluctable Modality of the Visible and the Infrared (opens in new tab)

For the cover of the 1922 first edition of Ulysses, James Joyce desired a particular shade of "Greek blue" to evoke the novel's correspondences to Homer and The Odyssey. Thanks to the scientists at the Library of Congress, we now know the exact mixture of pigments used for that iconic cover.