Balanced Ray Turquoise

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Latin radius, spoke-or-beam. As a color modifier, ray implies a radiant-and-spoke-of-light quality, the visual register of Bernini-Gloria-and-Baroque-altarpiece-ray hand-radiant-and-spoke-of-light Bernini-Gloria-and-Baroque-altarpiece-and-Counter-Reformation rayed-and-radiant-and-spoke-of-light surfaces under Bernini-Gloria-and-Baroque-altarpiece-and-Counter-Reformation gilded-spoke-and-altar-and-cathedral-dome heavenly-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to beam and gleam 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.