Bold Kin Ruby

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 English cynn, kindred. As a color modifier, kin implies a blood-relative-and-extended-family quality, the visual register of pre-modern-English-and-Anglo-Saxon hand-built family-hearth-and-meadhall-and-grandfather-clock blood-relation surfaces under Anglo-Saxon-and-pre-modern-English family-hearth-and-meadhall household firelight. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to clan and tribe in usage.

From the Latin ruber — simply, red. The gemstone is a chromium-tinged corundum, harder than anything in nature except diamond, and so saturated that a fine Burmese pigeon's blood ruby at auction outpaces a comparable diamond by weight. The color borrows the gem's confidence: a clear, glassy red without the brown of garnet or the blue of crimson.