![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordzaffre or zaffer or zaffir or even zaffar (ZAF-er) - n., a blue pigment obtained by roasting cobalt ore, used to produce blue glass aka smalt and in ceramic glazes; synonym for smalt; a cobalt-blue color.
As a color, it's this: . As a chemical, it's usually an impure form of either cobalt oxide or cobalt arsenate, and unfortunately I can't easily find a picture of the thing itself. As a glass add-in, it produces such pieces as this:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
As an English word, it dates to around 1660, from Italian zaffera, from Latin sapphirus, sapphire, which makes it a doublet of sapphire.
---L.
As a color, it's this: . As a chemical, it's usually an impure form of either cobalt oxide or cobalt arsenate, and unfortunately I can't easily find a picture of the thing itself. As a glass add-in, it produces such pieces as this:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
As an English word, it dates to around 1660, from Italian zaffera, from Latin sapphirus, sapphire, which makes it a doublet of sapphire.
---L.
