Bold Hall Cerulean

Old English beald, brave, courageous — a quality word that crossed over to color in the late seventeenth century. Bold describes a color that asserts itself: high saturation combined with mid lightness, where the hue presents itself without compromise. Sits at the center of the bold-bucket grid, near strong and rich. Closer to a presence word than a pigment word.

Old English heall, large-room / mansion. As a color modifier, hall implies a great-room-and-banquet quality, the visual register of Hampton-Court-and-Westminster hand-built timber-roof-and-stone-pillar great-hall ceremonial-and-dining surfaces under Tudor-and-Plantagenet great-hall ceremonial-feast candlelight. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to manor and court in usage.

From the Latin caeruleum, originally referring to dark blue paint pigment of the Roman world, then via French céruléen into English. As a modern art-supply name, cerulean blue is the cobalt-tin oxide pigment introduced in 1805. The color refers to a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the matte finish of mineral pigment in linseed oil: lighter than cobalt, deeper than aqua, with the painter's weight of a word for sky.