Frank Sirocco 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.

Arabic sharq, eastern-or-Saharan-wind. As a color modifier, sirocco implies a hot-Saharan-and-Mediterranean-wind quality, the visual register of Saharan-and-Sicilian-and-Maltese-sirocco hand-hot-Saharan-and-Mediterranean-wind Saharan-and-Sicilian-and-Maltese-sirocco-and-North-African sirocco-and-hot-Saharan-and-Mediterranean-wind surfaces under Saharan-and-Sicilian-and-Maltese-sirocco-and-North-African Sahara-and-Sicily-and-Malta-and-Tunis hot-North-African-wind-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to mistral and zephyr 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.