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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Greetings learned ones,
This is really a question for an art historian - Genevra? But I thought the list as a whole might be able to shed some light on the subject. In the Middle Ages there must have been a large industry in creating seals for individuals and corporations, but, unlike coins, the seal would presumably be made only once. Then again, one can imagine 'standardized' seals which only needed to have the individual´s name added. Do we have any knowledge of the process of creating such items? Would the abbess of a new monastery, for example, order (from whom?) a seal, specifying the size, shape, text, perhaps type of script, and image? Could she send a sketch of what the image should look like, or trust to the maker to have a set of images on hand? Maybe she went and had a look at them? The trouble with this is that my abbess is in Iceland, and I´m guessing (with no real evidence) that her seal would have been produced in Norway, so that would have been quite a journey. The woman in q
uestion was, however, quite well off, so the journey is not out of the question. We can´t examine the object itself, all we have is a drawing of the wax impression. I can also imagine that seals with ready-made images were imported, and the desired text then added. I´m sure there must be literature about this somewhere, but don´t know where to start!
Meg
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