Earnest Berg Ultramarine

Old English eornost, seriousness, zeal. Used as a color modifier since the nineteenth century for hues that read as committed but unshowy — the working blues of denim, the deep greens of Quaker meetinghouses. Sits in the bold-and-quiet corner of the grid, slightly less luminous than resolute and slightly less institutional than imperial.

Norwegian isberg, mountain-of-ice. As a color modifier, berg implies an iceberg-and-Antarctic-tabular-ice quality, the visual register of Antarctic-and-Greenland-iceberg hand-iceberg-and-Antarctic-tabular-ice Antarctic-and-Greenland-iceberg-and-Larsen-Ice-Shelf berg-and-iceberg-and-Antarctic-tabular-ice surfaces under Antarctic-and-Greenland-iceberg-and-Larsen-Ice-Shelf Ross-Sea-and-Weddell-Sea-and-Disko-Bay tabular-iceberg-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to floe and icicle 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.