Royal Tile Crimson

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.

Old English tigele, roof-tile. As a color modifier, tile implies a fired-clay-or-stone-flat quality, the visual register of Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile hand-fired-and-glazed clay-and-stone-and-marble Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile surfaces under Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to slab and plate in usage.

From the Old Spanish cremesin, itself from the Arabic qirmiz — the kermes scale insect, dried and ground into a brilliant carmine dye prized in the medieval Mediterranean. For centuries the most expensive red on a draper's shelf, reserved for cardinals, kings, and the cloth that gave English the word crimson. Cooler than scarlet, deeper than rose; the color of pomegranate seeds and a serious occasion.