Neat Beam Turquoise

Old French net, clean / pure — sharing root with Latin nitidus. As a color modifier, neat implies a clear-and-orderly quality where the hue carries the well-arranged visual register without clutter or excess. Sits at the crisp-and-orderly end of the grid, parallel to trim and tidy in usage.

Old English bēam, tree-or-ray-of-light. As a color modifier, beam implies a focused-and-shaft-of-light quality, the visual register of lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-beam hand-focused-and-shaft-of-light lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light beamed-and-focused-and-shaft-of-light surfaces under lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light coastal-headland-and-Gothic-nave-and-night-sky directed-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to ray and gleam 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.