A Colour Without Peer

It’s a colour I’ve been trying to capture all my adult life. I want to hold it in my hand, bathe in it, live forever near it. It’s a colour that soothes like silk, yet energises the spirit; it’s a clean, vibrant, joyous colour.

It’s the colour of gems, of Andean opal, and the flecked Peruvian turquoise pendant I bought years ago in Huaraz, and the rough azurite stone I spotted in the Johannesburg airport.

It’s the colour of ancient Roman glass beads that have been buried for centuries, and of old African trade beads I combined with others of a similar hue to make an aqua-themed bracelet.

It’s the colour of opaque fragments of glass (or are they frozen mermaid’s tears?) that have been tumbled and smoothed by the sea, of the luminous pale green glass tile my mother used for an interior design project, and of a stack of handmade glass art dishes.

It’s the glossy background glaze for a lacy, fern leaf pattern on a ceramic tile and of celadon leaf imprints on two mini coasters. It’s all of these.

Yet none matches the living, ephemeral, heart stopping shade of the crest of an ocean wave, just as it curls to break into foam, and a low, afternoon sun shines through the polished sheets of water.

That’s the perfect colour.