Fun personalized stationery for your family

Ever wonder where the envelope seal came from? I'm a bit of a history buff and decided to do a little searching on the Internet about this neat little creation and its usage. According to Wikipedia, a "Letters Close (Lat. litterae clausae) are a type of legal document which is a closed letter issued by a monarch or government granting a right, monopoly, title, or status to someone or some entity such as a corporation. These letters are personal in nature and were delivered folded sealed so that only the recipient can read the contents of the letter." Sounds pretty important! While the seal used to prevent others from viewing its contents is diiferent from a document seal itself, the two are similar in nature.

Wikipedia states this about a seal device: "The use of seals, in wax (sealing wax), in lacquer or embossed on paper, to authenticate writings, is a practice as old as writing itself. Seals of this nature were applied directly to the face of the document or attached to the document by cords in the owner's, or to a narrow strip of the document sliced and folded down as a tail but not detached from the document. This helped maintain authenticity by not allowing the reuse of the seal. If a forger tried to remove the seal in the first case, it would break. In the other cases, although the forger could remove the seal intact by ripping the cords from the paper, he'd still have to separate the cords to attach it to another document, which would destroy the seal as well because the cords had knots tied in them inside the wax seal." Thus the wax seal used for Letters Closed is similar to the wax seal used to produce an official stamp as a symbol of authority on the document itself. Fascinating!

The seals we use today on the outside of our envelopes remind us of the "privacy seals" used in years past. Though they are not necessarily used to keep the contents of the envelope private, they do continue the tradition of telling the recipient that the sender regards the contents of the envelope special. LovelyLabels.com offers 1 1/2" diameter seals which are similar in size to the wax seals we learned about. Our fun personalized stationery store offers theme based envelope seals that can be used with matching return address labels to create a fun mailing.

Envelope seals are fun and it is grand to be able to continue the tradition of including them as part of our everyday stationery collection!