Balanced Glare Turquoise

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Middle English glaren, to-shine-brightly. As a color modifier, glare implies a harsh-and-bright-and-overwhelming quality, the visual register of desert-noon-and-snow-field-glare hand-harsh-and-bright-and-overwhelming desert-noon-and-snow-field-and-salt-flat glared-and-harsh-and-bright-and-overwhelming surfaces under desert-noon-and-snow-field-and-salt-flat overhead-sun-and-snow-blind-and-bleached harsh-noon-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to flash and blaze 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.