Words To Live By: Vintage mantras for modern times
For its latest collection of rings, jeweller Seal & Scribe has curated a selection of antique glass seals with text only, leaving them wide open to interpretation
By Rachael Taylor
When Shari Cohen, founder of the jewellery brand Seal & Scribe, came across an antique green-glass seal with the words No caution guards us from surprise, it felt like a message for right now. A sign of the times.
“I thought it was really cryptic at first,” says Cohen of the seal’s message. The San Diego-based jeweller specialises in finding and setting such antique seals – once used to personalise wax-sealed envelopes – in contemporary jewels such as signet rings and pendants. These portable time capsules can be made of coloured glass or hardstones such as carnelian, and are decorated with images and text.
The befuddling message of this latest find did not put her off. “When I saw it, I thought… ‘Oh, I need this one’,” she laughs, in a way that suggests this is a thought she has perhaps a little too often when scouring the globe for the seals she sets in Seal & Scribe’s jewellery.
Seal & Scribe designer and founder Shari Cohen.
From cheeky wink to empowering mantra
Cohen approaches her work, and her antique acquisitions, with a historian’s nous. She got to contemplating about the past this quirky green seal might have had: “I think the message was probably intended as tongue-in-cheek, funny in a dry kind of way… along the lines of, I bet you didn’t expect to hear from me.” She likes to imagine it raising a smile when the recipient flipped their letter over to crack open the wax.
The seal now lives in a bold 18-carat yellow gold ring, part of Seal & Scribe’s new collection of one-of-a-kind rings called Words To Live By. As with all the jewellery brand’s salvaged seals, it is now embarking on a new chapter. Not just in how it is being used – transformed from functional object to alternative gem – but also in how its message, committed to glass more than a century ago, is interpreted.
“In today's world, as a modern mantra, I see No caution guards us from surprise as celebrating the surprises you didn't see coming in life,” says Cohen. “Being prepared is great, but we should also be flexible, because you never know what's around the corner; and that new surprise could lead you onto a new path – whether it's a career, a relationship, a new passion.”
Left to right: The Sempre O'Mesmo, Lungi Omai Vicino, and No Caution Guards Us From Surprise rings from Seal & Scribe’s Words To Live By collection.
Say what you feel, not what you see
Words To Live By differs from Seal & Scribe’s previous collection Love Letters in that Cohen has limited it to seals without imagery – words only. In Love Letters, the texts on the antique seals were often accompanied by pictures: plump cherubic angels, twinned hearts, bouquets of flowers. While the jeweller always encourages her clients to project their own meanings onto Seal & Scribe jewels, Cohen believes it is even easier to do this with text-only seals.
“You know it’s about love because they’ve put Cupid there,” she says, referencing her Choose Love ring that has a green-glass seal with the French word choississez, meaning ‘choose’. “I like the freedom that the words bring with them, because they’re not boxing you in.”
These text-only seals are also rarer than those with images and words. Cohen believes they were made by William Tassie, a Scottish gem engraver and cameo carver who worked in London in the early 19th century. He was the nephew and successor of James Tassie, whose skill in gem engraving and classical cameo reproductions was so renown that Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, ordered a collection of more than 15,000 from him.
Without the overtly Victorian- or Georgian-style illustrations, the younger Tassie’s Words To Live By seals feel more timeless, Cohen believes. The ring designs she has created to immortalise them reflect this. The No Caution Guards Us From Surprise ring has a thick, stepped bezel setting that hugs the seal’s rounded corners, and the setting has been given a brushed finish to create depth and contrast against the highly polished shank.
No Caution Guards Us From Surprise ring in 18-carat yellow gold, with a green antique glass seal and a pair of antique Old European-cut diamonds, by Seal & Scribe.
A ring to remember you’ve arrived
Even sharper in its angles is the Far Away Yet So Close ring, also part of Words To Live By. This blue-glass antique seal, with the Italian inscription Lungi omai vicino, which translates to ‘far away now near’, has been held in place with a very thin, minimalist bezel setting designed to let the seal shine.
This message is also wide open to interpretation. For Cohen, she thinks of it as “something that was out of reach that is now within reach”. This could be a career milestone, or a personal achievement such as the birth of a long-awaited baby, or something more subtle, like finding inner peace. It is about achieving your dream, big or small.
Cohen is a huge fan of the Olympics, and she loves the idea of an athlete celebrating a medal or a personal best with this ring: “I could see an Olympian or a Paralympian saying, ‘This thing seemed so far away, and now it's right here. I'm right at the threshold of doing this thing that I've worked so hard for’.”
Lungi Omai Vicino (Far Away, Yet Now So Near) ring in 18-carat yellow gold, with a blue antique glass seal, and two Old Mine Cut diamonds, by Seal & Scribe.
Forget the noise, be true to yourself
A third ring in Words To Live By offers us up a Portuguese phrase for us to interpret. Into a sculpturally bevelled octagonal seal of champagne-hued glass, the words Sempre o’mesmo have been carved. The direct translation is ‘always the same’.
“I think that the original intent was to say, ‘I'm loyal, you can depend on me’,” says Cohen. “But when I think about it as a modern mantra, it feels as though it is about consistency, which is a worthy personal attribute. In today's world, we're engulfed with thousands of images and messages daily, through computers, phones, social media, the internet. In this environment, where things change by the minute, being sure of who you are and not succumbing to the constant changing of societal norms and fads is admirable. This ring is saying: just be true to yourself.”
Seal & Scribe’s Always The Same 18-carat yellow gold ring has a quietly strong design that reflects this aspirational stoic inner power. The stepped bezel, with a brushed finish, flows around and mirrors the edges of the champagne-coloured seal.
Sempre O'Mesmo (Always the Same) ring in 18-carat yellow gold with a champagne-coloured antique glass seal and a pair of antique Jubilee-cut diamonds, by Seal & Scribe.
Disco-ball diamonds from another time
As with the other rings in the Words To Live By collection, Cohen has had a pair of old-cut antique diamonds set into the shoulders of the rings. The diamonds in the Always The Same ring are particularly special, as they are very rare examples of jubilee cuts. This high-sparkle 19th century cut usually has 88 facets (versus the 58 carried by a round brilliant) and no table – instead of a flat top, the facets meet in a point. “They look like little disco balls,” says Cohen of her jubilee-cut diamonds.
It would have been impossible for the cutter who named this special diamond shape in honour of the English Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1895 to have described it as looking like a disco ball – it would be another two decades before a mirrored ball first lit up a dance floor – yet, it is the perfect description.
And this is the essence of Seal & Scribe’s Words To Live By collection. The scripts on the glass seals were laid down to deliver a message right for that time, but the meanings we can take from these same seals today will be entirely different – and, always, deeply ours.
Above and main image (clockwise from top left): The No Caution Guards Us From Surprise, Lungi Omai Vicino, and Sempre O'Mesmo one-of-a-kind rings from Seal & Scribe’s Words To Live By collection.
This article was written in partnership with Seal & Scribe
