Genuine Lone Turquoise

Latin genuinus, natural, innate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as authentic rather than imitated. Genuine indigo, genuine ochre: moderate-to-high saturation combined with the optical impression of a hue from real pigment rather than synthetic dye. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside true and honest.

Middle English lone, shortened from alone. As a color modifier, lone implies a solitary-and-singular-and-isolated quality, the visual register of Caspar-David-Friedrich-Wanderer-and-lone-pine hand-solitary-and-singular-and-isolated Caspar-David-Friedrich-Wanderer-and-lone-pine-and-Romantic-vista loned-and-solitary-and-singular-and-isolated surfaces under Caspar-David-Friedrich-Wanderer-and-lone-pine-and-Romantic-vista mountaintop-and-empty-shore single-figure-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to void and drear 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.