My seal
King Charles has seals for his projects. In fact he’s gone a bit seal mad, having had three created in about a year, all designed by Jonathan Ive’s LoveFrom design agency. You can see them by clicking on these links:
Well if King Charles has a seal, I want one for myself. So I set about designing one. Here’s the result:
I also made an interactive version.
To create this seal, I first drew out the basic design in pencil on a sheet of A3, then used Unipin fineline black markers of different thicknesses to do the inking. I used a Lamy Joy calligraphy pen to do the lettering on the right side and around the edge.
There is lots of symbology in this. Here’s some of them:
I love beetles. I’m a bit fan of Darwin, who also loved beetles. The ancient Egyptians used beetles in seal amulets, believing them to be a divine manifestation of the morning sun.
In the center is the sun, the source of all our energy. It is also an all-seeing eye. It is also a sunflower. In some cultures the sunflower is believed to ward off evil spirits.
I like to be creative, and I also like science and reason. These interests have traditionally been associated with the right and left-hand sides of the brain. So the beetle also represents the brain, with my “left-brain” interests on the left and “right-brain” interests on the right.
I am a big fan of William Blake. Some people mistakenly believe Blake was a Freemason, because a compass is a prominent symbolic element in some of his best visual works. But he was not a mason, the compass to Blake represented order and reason (partly due to the fact that the God in Paradise Lost by Milton used a Golden Compass to create the universe - see extract below). Since Blake associated the compass with science and reason, I have put it above the left-side of the brain.
- In Blake’s mythology he had a character called Los who was associated with the imagination. In one of Blakes images Los, he is carrying an unusual lantern. You can see that lantern represented opposite the compass, on the right.
Nor staid, but on the Wings of Cherubim
Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode
Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn;
For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine
Follow’d in bright procession to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then staid the fervid Wheeles, and in his hand
He took the golden Compasses, prepar’d
In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things:
One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d
Round through the vast profunditie obscure,
And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,
This be thy just Circumference, O World.John Milton, Paradise Lost bk vii, lns 210-31 (1667)