On the Edition of Collections of Seals and a Description of Seal Imagery

Abstract

Two significant sphragistic source publications issued in 2012 and 2015 deal with seals on documents from the State Archive in Bydgoszcz and seal stamps from the State Archive in Poznań. Descriptions of seal images, contained in the cited publications, which could become models for future editions, inclined the author of the article to present his reflections on editing seals. The majority of the remarks pertain to the manner of constructing a description of armorial seals from the viewpoint of heraldry. Theses concerning the method of characterising seal imagery can be presented as follows: 1. A description of the seal image should not double information accessible in the illustration; 2. A description should contain expanding information (e.g. an identification of the motifs of deciphering the symbolic message); 3. All descriptions should possess a unified form and normalised contents; 4. A description must be maintained in a language adapted to the described contents, i.e. heraldic language and terminology must be applied to designate coats of arms, and descriptions of tools should use the names of specialist instruments in accordance with the terminology of suitable crafts and professions; 5. A description of armorial seals must take into account their dual character: a seal with a coat of arms (in the field a shield with an emblem) and a seal with an emblem (in the field an emblem without a shield); names of coats of arms should be used suitably for formulating descriptions of coats of arms; 7. In the course of depicting state emblems on “government’ seals one should take into account legal regulations upon whose basis the described emblem was created or modified. The use of precise terminology will make it possible to avoid interpretation misunderstandings, which at times are the consequences of the ambiguous language of the description..