Surveyed Lace Sky

Old French surveer, to look upon — past-participle of survey. As a color modifier, surveyed implies a clear-and-measured-and-coordinated quality, the crisp color of Mason-Dixon-Line-and-Royal-Navy-Hydrographic scientific-and-cadastral land-and-sea surveying tradition. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and plotted in usage.

Old French laz, cord / lace. As a color modifier, lace implies a hand-tatted-and-decorative-net quality, the visual register of Edwardian-and-Belgian-Bruges-lace hand-tatted-and-bobbin-lace bridal-and-formal-wear delicate-network-pattern textile surfaces under Bruges-and-Edwardian hand-tatted-lace filtered light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to silk and fluff in usage.

The blue of a clear sky at noon — produced by Rayleigh scattering, the preferential dispersion of shorter wavelengths through atmospheric molecules. Air itself is colorless; the color we see is sunlight scattered toward our eyes by every cubic kilometer above. The reference shade is mid-latitude noon under a high pressure system: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the luminous depth of light scattered across an entire hemisphere of air.