Pure Irish Royal

Latin purus, clean, unmixed — applied to color since antiquity for hues that contain only one pigment without dilution by white, black, or another color. Pure red is the textbook ideal: high saturation, mid lightness, no shift. Sits at the bold-bucket center, parallel to true and strong.

Old English Irisc, of-Ireland. As a color modifier, irish implies a Hibernian-and-peat quality, the visual register of Irish-Hibernian hand-built peat-and-stone-and-thatched cottage-and-pasture-and-bog surfaces under Hibernian-and-West-of-Ireland peat-bog-and-cottage atmospheric light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to welsh and celtic in usage.

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.