Punchy Hera Turquoise

A modern adjectival form of punch, to strike sharply. Used as a color word since the early twentieth century for hues that read as highly contrasting and visually loud. Punchy red, punchy yellow: the implication is full saturation combined with optical impact. Sits across the bold and bright buckets, near vivid and striking.

Greek Ἥρα, queen-of-the-Olympian-gods. As a color modifier, hera implies a peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods quality, the visual register of Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple hand-peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple-and-Heraion-of-Samos hera-and-peacock-feather-and-queen-of-gods surfaces under Olympian-Hera-and-Argos-temple-and-Heraion-of-Samos Polyclitus-and-Argive-and-Samian peacock-throne-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and diana 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.