Bold Tooled Bougainvillea

Old English beald, brave, courageous — a quality word that crossed over to color in the late seventeenth century. Bold describes a color that asserts itself: high saturation combined with mid lightness, where the hue presents itself without compromise. Sits at the center of the bold-bucket grid, near strong and rich. Closer to a presence word than a pigment word.

Old French tōl, implement. As a color modifier, tooled implies a hand-worked-and-detailed quality, the visual register of Renaissance-and-Florentine-tooled-leather hand-worked-and-stamped-and-engraved tooled-leather-and-bookbinding-and-saddle-and-belt hand-worked surfaces under Renaissance-and-Florentine hand-tooled-leather workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to carved and inlaid in usage.

The genus Bougainvillea — South American vines named for the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, whose 1768 voyage encountered the plant in Rio de Janeiro. The color refers to the bracts (modified leaves) of a vivid magenta Bougainvillea spectabilis: a saturated, slightly cool deep pink-magenta with the matte papery finish of bracts that surround the plant's tiny actual flowers. Brighter than fuchsia, cooler than coral.