Burning Flare Turquoise

The progressive participle of burn — used as a color modifier for hues that read as actively luminous, as if combustion is in progress. Burning red, burning orange: the implication is high saturation combined with thermal heat. Sits in the bright-and-warm corner alongside hot and flame. Slightly more active than smoldering.

Origin obscure, attested c. 1540, to-burn-with-an-unsteady-flame. As a color modifier, flare implies a sudden-and-spreading-and-bright-burst quality, the visual register of signal-flare-and-solar-flare hand-sudden-and-spreading-and-bright-burst signal-flare-and-solar-flare-and-magnesium-distress flared-and-sudden-and-spreading-and-bright surfaces under signal-flare-and-solar-flare-and-magnesium-distress shipboard-and-rescue-and-corona high-intensity-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to blaze and flash 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.