Calm Tufted Verdigris

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.

Old French touffe, tuft. As a color modifier, tufted implies a hand-tufted-and-puffed quality, the visual register of Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque-tufted-upholstery hand-tufted-and-puffed-and-upholstered velvet-and-silk-and-leather tufted-and-puffed-upholstery surfaces under Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque hand-tufted-upholstery-and-cushion light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to fluff and flock in usage.

The basic copper carbonate that forms on weathered copper and bronze — the pigment scraped from oxidized metal and used in Renaissance painting before being supplanted by more stable greens. The color refers to a thick verdigris on aged copper roofing or the Statue of Liberty's surface: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the powdery finish of mineral oxide. Cooler than patina, warmer than seafoam, with the archaeological weight of a mineral made by time.