Who doesn’t like to seal envelopes in true Game of Thrones (or Harry Potter) style?

In fact, seals played an important role in pre-literacy times for denoting ownership. According to the exhibit on ancient Cretan seals at the Met in NYC, they were originally carved from easily-worked materials in the early Minoan period (~2500 BCE) – ivory, bone, shell, and soft stones – to harder materials by the late Minoan (~1500 BCE) – hematite, jasper, chalcedony, and harder stones. Even semiprecious stones like agate had figures carved into them.

As for my own take on this historical object, I 3D printed these seals in 17-4 stainless, along with an accompanying conformal case in Onyx Nylon.

This was truly an exercise in materials and geometrical interaction, since the levels of detail in my designs were constrained by overall size, print bead resolution, and the viscosity of the hot wax. I decreased the depth from over 1mm to .6mm, drafted the sides and filleted corners to ensure that the wax wouldn’t stick on press-and-retract – as it did on my first try.

I sanded the pre-sintered stainless seals, but left the print-bead texture in the recess. The stamped wax therefore bears a subtle mark of the seal fabrication method.