Garish Bark Turquoise

Middle English garen, to stare — adjectival suffix -ish. As a color modifier, garish implies a saturated-and-eye-stunning-and-overdone quality, the bright color of Las-Vegas-and-Coney-Island over-the-top neon-marquee display. Sits at the bright-and-flamboyant end of the grid, parallel to gaudy and lurid in usage.

Old Norse bǫrkr, bark. As a color modifier, bark implies a tree-bark-and-rough-and-cork quality, the visual register of birch-and-oak-and-cork-bark hand-stripped-and-cork-bark birch-and-oak-and-cork-tree-bark hand-stripped-tree-bark surfaces under birch-and-oak-and-cork-bark hand-stripped-bark forest light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to rough and cane 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.