Smoky Knell Ultramarine

An adjectival form of smoke, used as a color word since at least the fourteenth century. Smoky implies a slightly muted, slightly hazed quality — as if the color were seen through a layer of suspended particulate. Used across both deep and neutral buckets: a smoky black has slightly less density than pure black; a smoky gray has slightly less coolness than pure gray.

Old English cnyll, funeral-bell. As a color modifier, knell implies a funeral-and-passing-bell quality, the visual register of English-funeral-and-passing-bell slow-and-tolling-funeral mourning-bell-and-bell-tower-tolling slow-and-mourning surfaces under slow-tolling-funeral-bell mourning candlelight. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to bell and vesper 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.