Bold Brine 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 brȳne, salt-water-or-pickle-brine. As a color modifier, brine implies a salt-water-and-pickle-and-tide-pool quality, the visual register of Atlantic-tide-pool-and-pickling-brine hand-salt-water-and-pickle-and-tide-pool Atlantic-tide-pool-and-pickling-brine-and-Cornish-rock-pool brine-and-salt-water-and-pickle surfaces under Atlantic-tide-pool-and-pickling-brine-and-Cornish-rock-pool Lizard-Point-and-North-Cornish-coast salt-tide-pool-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to floe and torrent 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.