Stately Hermes Rose

An adjectival form of state, condition of dignity. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for the deep saturated jewel tones of formal ceremony — the deep blue of a robes-of-state, the deep red of a state-banquet velvet. Sits in the bold-and-formal corner alongside imperial and royal, with slightly less institutional weight.

Greek Ἑρμῆς, messenger-of-the-Olympian-gods. As a color modifier, hermes implies a winged-sandal-and-caduceus-and-messenger quality, the visual register of Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble hand-winged-sandal-and-caduceus-and-messenger Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble-and-Hellenistic-bronze hermes-and-winged-sandal-and-caduceus surfaces under Praxiteles-Hermes-and-Olympia-marble-and-Hellenistic-bronze Olympian-pantheon-and-marketplace Mediterranean-marble-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and atlas in usage.

The Latin rosa, the Greek rhodon, the Persian gul — every European language has a different name for the same flower and the same color. Rose covers the spectrum from blush to fuchsia depending on the cultivar, but in pigment shorthand it means a cool, slightly bluish red — the inside of a damask petal, the dye that washes out of madder root.