Open Void Turquoise

Old English open, unobstructed — used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as airy or uncrowded. Open blue, open green: moderate saturation combined with optical spaciousness, the slight visual breath of a hue that doesn't crowd the surface it covers. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear.

Latin vocivus, empty-or-vacant. As a color modifier, void implies an empty-and-vacant-and-bottomless quality, the visual register of Yves-Klein-and-Rothko-void hand-empty-and-vacant-and-bottomless Yves-Klein-and-Rothko-and-Malevich-Black-Square voided-and-empty-and-vacant-and-bottomless surfaces under Yves-Klein-and-Rothko-and-Malevich-Black-Square monochrome-canvas-and-color-field-and-suprematist gallery-and-void-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to blank and hollow 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.