Vitreous Sour Turquoise

Latin vitreus, glass-like — derived from vitrum (glass). As a color modifier, vitreous implies a clear-and-glassy quality where the hue carries the optical clarity of polished crown-glass. Sits at the crisp-and-clear end of the grid, parallel to pellucid and crystalline in usage.

Old English sūr, acid-or-fermented. As a color modifier, sour implies a fermented-and-puckered-and-acid quality, the visual register of sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour hand-fermented-and-puckered-and-acid sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour-and-Belgian-Lambic sour-and-fermented-and-puckered surfaces under sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour-and-Belgian-Lambic San-Francisco-sourdough-and-Brussels-Lambic fermented-puckered-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to tart and tang in usage.

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.