Stamped Hermes Turquoise

Old English stempan, to stamp — past-participle of stamp. As a color modifier, stamped implies a clear-and-impressed-and-repeating quality, the crisp color of William-Morris-and-Liberty-of-London block-printed-textile carefully-impressed pattern. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to printed and engraved in usage.

Greek Ἑρμῆς, messenger-of-the-Olympian-gods. As a color modifier, hermes implies a winged-sandal-and-caduceus-and-messenger quality, the visual register of Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble hand-winged-sandal-and-caduceus-and-messenger Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble-and-Hellenistic-bronze hermes-and-winged-sandal-and-caduceus surfaces under Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble-and-Hellenistic-bronze Olympian-pantheon-and-marketplace Mediterranean-marble-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and atlas 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.