Calm Diana turquoise

Latin calma, heat of the day — paradoxically drifted in Italian to mean stillness. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as untroubled. Calm blue, calm gray: moderate saturation combined with optical quiet. Sits at the crisp-bucket near quiet and steady.

Latin Diana, Roman-goddess-of-moon-and-hunt. As a color modifier, diana implies a Roman-goddess-and-moon-and-hunter-and-virgin quality, the visual register of Roman-Diana-and-Ephesian-Artemis hand-Roman-goddess-and-moon-and-hunter-and-virgin Roman-Diana-and-Ephesian-Artemis-and-Lake-Nemi diana-and-Roman-goddess-and-moon-and-hunter surfaces under Roman-Diana-and-Ephesian-Artemis-and-Lake-Nemi Aventine-Hill-and-Nemi-grove moonlit-grove-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to luna and hera 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.