Shaded Ruff Ultramarine

Old English sceadwian, to cover with shadow — past-participle of shade. As a color modifier, shaded implies a hue darkened by overhead-foliage-or-architectural-element occlusion in pre-modern garden-and-courtyard tradition. Sits at the deep-and-obscured end of the grid, parallel to shadowy but more architectural in connotation.

Old English ruffe, Elizabethan-pleated-collar. As a color modifier, ruff implies a starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar quality, the visual register of Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff hand-starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff-and-Holbein-portrait ruff-and-starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar surfaces under Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff-and-Holbein-portrait Tudor-and-Spanish-Habsburg-court starched-collar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-textile end of the grid, parallel to gown and frock in usage.

The pigment ground from lapis lazuli — the Afghan mineral imported through Venice in the late Middle Ages, more expensive by weight than gold during the Renaissance. The color refers to a freshly mixed ultramarine pigment in linseed oil: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of micron-ground rock. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal, with the art-historical weight of the blue Vermeer reserved for Mary's robe.