Shamrock
Retired2002-2021 · Color No. 324
Introducing Shamrock, made by The Fiesta Tableware Company from 2002 to 2021. It's a vibrant and refreshing shade of green, reminiscent of the lushness of shamrock fields. Shamrock adds a lively and festive touch to any tablescape. Mix and match Shamrock with colors like White and Sunflower for a cheerful and vibrant table setting, or pair it with Plum and Slate for a more sophisticated and earthy combination.
Production
Shamrock was retired in 2021, so it is a hunt for secondhand pieces now. Fiesta Factory Direct is where the colors still being made are, if you are filling a set.
Shop Fiesta Factory Direct (opens in a new tab)Notes on Shamrock
Shamrock ran nineteen years, 2002 to 2021, and it's one of the most saturated greens Fiesta has ever made - a clean, bright grass green with nothing muddy about it. It took over from the acid Post 86 Chartreuse and pushed Yellow off the shelf the year it arrived. It's a lead color: strong enough to carry a table on its own, and strong enough to overwhelm a delicate one. It sits close to the vintage Medium Green, which makes it a genuinely useful modern stand-in for anyone building a vintage-look table without vintage prices.
Using Shamrock on a table
Shamrock carries enough color to lead a table on its own. Use it for the plates and let quieter pieces do the rest; two or three settings of it go a long way. Its mid lightness (L* 62) means most food reads against it without either washing out or vanishing. It nearly disappears against a white cloth (3.0:1), so it shows best on dark wood or a colored runner.
Below, 5 combinations built only from colors Fiesta has actually produced. Each says which rule it follows, and which pieces you can still buy today.
The pairing in its own description
Named in the descriptionThese colors are named alongside Shamrock in this guide's description of it.
Buy these to go with it
Shamrock was retired in 2021, but these are all in production now - the set you can actually finish buying.
Opposite on the wheel
Mulberry sits roughly opposite Shamrock in hue, which is the highest-contrast pairing the palette offers. The neutrals keep it from shouting.
All green
Every color here is from the green family, arranged light to dark. A single-family table reads calm and deliberate rather than busy.
- Sea Mist Green
-
Your color Shamrock
- Sage
- Evergreen
Three-way split
Blue (Cobalt) and Heather sit about a third of the way around the color wheel from Shamrock in each direction. Evenly spaced hues stay lively without any one taking over.
- White
-
Your color Shamrock
- Heather
- Blue (Cobalt)
Where Shamrock sits in the line
Shamrock took over from Chartreuse, 1997-1999 as Fiesta's green, and is noticeably darker than it - a clearly different glaze rather than a reformulation (ΔE 14.6). It has been in production 19 years against a median of 7 for its era - one of the colors the company kept. In 2002 it took the place of Yellow, 1987-2002 on the shelf. What else happened in 2002 →
Closest colors in the palette
Ranked by CIEDE2000 (ΔE) against Shamrock. Under about ΔE 5 two colors are hard to tell apart side by side - useful when you are identifying an unmarked piece.
On the table alongside Shamrock
34 colors were in production at the same time. The 10 nearest in the timeline: