A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1097 entries
verdigris
Verdigris is the blue-green crust that forms on copper, brass, and bronze exposed to air and moisture over time. It is a mixture of copper carbonates and, near the sea, chlorides, and it forms a stable layer that protects the metal beneath, which is why a copper roof lasts for centuries. It is also the pigment made deliberately by exposing copper sheets to vinegar fumes.
Etymology
The word came into English from Old French, from a phrase meaning green of Greece, and why Greece is not established; a competing medieval form reads it as green of Spain instead. Either way, it is a color named for a country, which puts it with sienna, umber, and gamboge in the small class of pigments that are also gazetteer entries.
Notes
The Statue of Liberty is the most-photographed verdigris object in the world and was a shining copper color for about twenty years after it went up. As a pigment, verdigris is beautiful and unstable, darkening and turning brown over time and reacting with other pigments beside it, which is why a great many green passages in old paintings are now the wrong color.