Printed Blank Turquoise

Latin premere, to press — past-participle of print. As a color modifier, printed implies a clear-and-impressed-and-multiplied quality, the crisp color of Marimekko-and-Liberty-of-London hand-or-machine-printed textile-and-paper pattern-design. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to stamped and etched in usage.

Old French blanc, white-or-empty. As a color modifier, blank implies an unmarked-and-empty-and-pristine quality, the visual register of fresh-page-and-primed-canvas-blank hand-unmarked-and-empty-and-pristine fresh-page-and-primed-canvas-and-white-room blanked-and-unmarked-and-empty-and-pristine surfaces under fresh-page-and-primed-canvas-and-white-room studio-and-stationer-and-gallery untouched-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to void 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.