#Water Seals

[usnatarchives]

Revolutionary War Pension Files Seals ✒️🪙📜

Official American 19th century records have fascinating visual features and many remarkable examples of those can be found in the Revolutionary War pension files at the National Archives. 

During the conservation stabilization treatment of these records, the conservators come across watermarks, ribbons, wood engraving illustrations, historical repairs, and of course various seals and wafers.

Guest Post by

Paper Conservator (Document Conservation Laboratory, RXC)

Ewa Paul (National Archives)

The term “seal” can be confusing because it refers to both the impression and the device which produces it. Early documents or letters were secured with resinous sealing wax impressed with a stamp seal and were reserved for officials or aristocrats. Later on, in the 19th c., the majority of the literate people used circular paste wafers and paper wafer seals which were much cheaper and easier to use. Wafers are “thin, flat, baked adhesive discs” made of flour paste. They would be moistened on both sides before being pressed to seal a letter or a document. Wafers came in different sizes and colors, and were used as adhesive joints or for affixing paper seals on official documents as shown below.

The wafer made from red colored paste is underneath the paper seal stuck on top. It is the same seal shown on white and blue wafer paper seal.

 Sometimes the wafer paper seals would be made to purposefully emulate the appearance of the older wax / resinous seals as illustrated below (NARA records).

The paper seals found on the Revolutionary War documents vary in color, style and type and can have eye-catching, intricately carved designs.

The Revolutionary War pensions records bear many types of seals: hand-written seals, ink printed seals, embossed paper wafer seals and “Scherenschnitte” hand-cut seals.

The image of the beehive in the inked seal above illustrates the importance of  agriculture, as does the plough in the paper seal below, featured in the Revolutionary War pension file of James Scott, TN.

Hand-cut  Scherenschnitte seals found on the American Revolutionary War pension records. Scherenschnitte paper seals are one of a kind. Scherenschnitte means “scissor cuts” and is a traditional folk-art brought to Pennsylvania in the 18th century by German immigrants.

As other methods of document protection became common, particularly the self-sealing envelope, the use of wafer paper seals declined and by the end of the 19th century the wafers and seals became obsolete.  

These days the seals remind us about the importance of privacy and the need to guard our information, and how tricky it must have been to keep things private in the days past.

[snailtongue]

[ID: Two photos at slightly different angles of a ribbon seal sitting on an ice floe. The background is of pure blue water with smaller ice floes in it.] via

[opens-up-4-nobody]

:-P

[demaparbat-hp]

Golden Boy (and Silver Girl) for the Kintsugi AU.

[islandmusic]

ワモンアザラシ

[modmad]

Wanted to try again at a fursona (love my other one, la Creatura, but they're a bit complicated!) Tried to keep it simple and soft, and boiled it down to two creatures I love: seals and donkeys! behold. my new fursona! a Sonkey! name wip??? I am amazed at how attached I am to them already! they are also very inspired by my favourite cuddly toy, Sweep! I love them a lot!!! uses any and all pronouns but defaults to they/them :3

[nightmaskart]

"Will you take this dagger from me, sweet sister? Don't linger."

[pigeon-princess]

Can I please talk about my weird little Warg from Lonely Light? My salt crusted Ironborn bastard whose definitely a Targaryen. Gwyndon "Gwyn" Pyke, my selkie boy.

We've started playing a little ASOIAF tabletop game set during the Blackfyre Rebellions (around 90 years before Game of Thrones). Our travelling party consists of two Targaryen bastards from the opposite side of Westeros and the Hedge Knight holding them for ransom (or so we thought).

[mollymontycats]

I have 10 water bowls all over the house. But this one is my favorite.

[vinceaddams]

I thought painting ceilings and walls would be fairly easy because they're so plain and flat, but it turns out they're also large and high up.

[chasingrainbowsforever]

By Dmitri Kokh, Underwater and Wildlife Photographer

[tsukastims]

🍼🦭﹔ Agere seal themed stimboard !

Contains blue and white, seal, water, and agere related stims !

Requested by ﹔@puuggle !

Request status ﹔open !

|| 🍼 🦭 🍼 // 🦭 × 🍼 // 🦭 🍼 🦭 ||

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtle hunt gone wrong.

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[mothhue]

A hat under waters- The arctic tour!

The S.S on ships stand for "steamship," so on the tour ride it's S.E(Steam engine)! :D

[connorphilpphotography]

Seals, Loch Linne, Scotland

[sans-guy]

Do I think Sebastian can swim

idk do you? yes i think he can swim/move on land just fine. maybe he's definitely faster in water, but he still has scales on the underside of his snake body (which is a sea krait thing and not a true sea snake thing) so he can use his snake muscles to slither around on land