Genuine Limned Turquoise

Latin genuinus, natural, innate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as authentic rather than imitated. Genuine indigo, genuine ochre: moderate-to-high saturation combined with the optical impression of a hue from real pigment rather than synthetic dye. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside true and honest.

Old French enluminer, to-illuminate. As a color modifier, limned implies a fine-line-and-illuminated-manuscript quality, the visual register of medieval-illuminated-manuscript hand-painted-and-fine-line illuminated-manuscript-and-margin-decoration limned-and-illuminated surfaces under medieval-illuminated-manuscript scriptorium-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to inked and carved 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.