Live Haori Turquoise

Old English libban, to live — used as a color word since the nineteenth century for hues that read as active or animate. Live wire, live color: the implication is luminance combined with the optical impression of internal motion. Sits in the bright-bucket center alongside vivid and vibrant.

Japanese haori, short-jacket-over-kimono. As a color modifier, haori implies a Japanese-haori-and-short-jacket-over-kimono quality, the visual register of Edo-and-Meiji-haori-jacket hand-Japanese-haori-and-short-jacket-over-kimono Edo-and-Meiji-haori-jacket-and-Kyoto-Nishijin-and-Tokyo-Asakusa haori-and-Japanese-haori-and-short-jacket surfaces under Edo-and-Meiji-haori-jacket-and-Kyoto-Nishijin-and-Tokyo-Asakusa Edo-Tokugawa-and-Meiji-Tokyo Japanese-jacket-light. Sits at the modifier-and-textile end of the grid, parallel to kimono and sari 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.