Frank Jolly Turquoise

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.

Old French jolif, festive-and-pretty. As a color modifier, jolly implies a hearty-and-warm-and-festive quality, the visual register of Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-jolly hand-hearty-and-warm-and-festive Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-and-Pickwickian jollied-and-hearty-and-warm-and-festive surfaces under Dickens-Christmas-and-Falstaffian-and-Pickwickian goose-and-plum-pudding-and-roaring-hearth Christmas-Eve-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to merry and mirth 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.