I tend to think of seals as connected with secrecy. Documents fastened with a seal, in order to preserve the contents intact and private. (This is what writing romantic suspense does for you.) Victorian love letters and that sort of thing. In fact the most common historical use was for validation - documents were not considered official unless they were sealed. The fixings for the seals were also often complex and small works of art in their own right - tags and bindings that were cut out or braided. Sometimes a thumb print is still visible on the back of the wax, even after 700 or 800 years! The impressions could be quite sophisticated - figures, religious images, plants and animals, even puns and word play on names - part of a visual culture before reading was common. Apparently experts can discover a considerable amount of information on things like shipping from the images depicted. Fascinating from something not much bigger than a thumb nail, although corporate seals for towns and cities or royalty might be bigger.
Thanks to Dr New's enthusiasm it was an absorbing afternoon. Will what I learned surface in a book one day? It's gone into the melting pot in my subconscious, so who knows? All sorts of things work their way to the surface, over the passage of time.
You can find out more about the project Dr New is currently engaged on here:
www.exploringmedievalseals.org
