Frank Ishtar Moss

From the Old French franc, free, sincere — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as direct and unhedged. Frank red, frank brown: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside direct and honest.

Akkadian Ištar, Babylonian-goddess-of-love-and-war. As a color modifier, ishtar implies a Babylonian-Venus-and-eight-pointed-star quality, the visual register of Babylonian-Ishtar-Gate-and-Mesopotamian-temple hand-Babylonian-Venus-and-eight-pointed-star Babylonian-Ishtar-Gate-and-Mesopotamian-temple-and-Akkadian-cylinder-seal ishtar-and-Babylonian-Venus-and-eight-pointed-star surfaces under Babylonian-Ishtar-Gate-and-Mesopotamian-temple-and-Akkadian-cylinder-seal Babylon-and-Nineveh-and-Mari blue-glazed-brick-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to isis and hera in usage.

Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.