Authentic OTTOMAN TURK Islamic 1750-1900AD Document Seal Artifact i48935

Item: i48935

  
Authentic

Authentic Ottoman Seal Artifact circa
1750-1900 A.D.
(11.28 grams) 2.9×2.4×2.1 centimeters (Material: Bronze)
Writing in Slavic: КОДЖА АХМЕД МЕХМЕДОВ / “Kodja Ahmed Mehmedov”

Seals like this were used to seal documents with an imprint on wax, or used to
sign a document. Interesting how this seal has what looks like a whole name
written on it.

Provenance: From private collection in the United States of America.
Ownership History: From private collection in the United States, bought in
private sale in the United States of America.

 You are bidding on the exact

Guarantee of Authenticity.

A seal is a device for making an impression in wax, clay, paper, or
some other medium, including an embossment on paper, and is also the impression
thus made. The original purpose was to authenticate a document, a wrapper for
one such as a modern envelope, or the cover of a container or package holding
valuables or other objects.

The seal-making device is also referred to as the seal matrix or
die; the imprint it creates as the seal impression (or, more rarely,
the sealing). If the impression is made purely as a relief resulting from
the greater pressure on the paper where the high parts of the matrix touch, the
seal is known as a dry seal; in other cases ink or another a liquid or
liquefied medium is used, in another color than the paper.

In most traditional forms of dry seal the design on the seal matrix is in
intaglio
(cut below the flat surface) and
therefore the design on the impressions made is in
relief
(raised above the surface). The design
on the impression will reverse (be a mirror-image of) that of the matrix, which
is especially important when script is included in the design, as it very often
is. This will not be the case if paper is embossed from behind, where the matrix
and impression read the same way, and both matrix and impression are in relief.
However
engraved gems
were often carved in relief,
called
cameo
in this context, giving a
“counter-relief” or intaglio impression when used as seals. The process is
essentially that of a
mould
.

Most seals have always given a single impression on an essentially flat
surface, but in medieval Europe two-sided seals with two matrices were often
used by institutions or rulers (such as towns, bishops and kings) to make
two-sided or fully three-dimensional impressions in wax, with a “tag”, a piece
of ribbon or strip of
parchment
, running through them. These
“pendent” seal impressions dangled below the documents they authenticated, to
which the attachment tag was sewn or otherwise attached (single-sided seals were
treated in the same way).

For legal purposes, the definition of a seal may be extended to include
rubber stamps
,^[2]
or writing specified words (“seal” or “L.S.”).^[3]

In the United States, the word “seal” is sometimes assigned to a
facsimile
of the seal design (in monochrome or
color), which may be used in a variety of contexts including architectural
settings, on flags
, or on official
letterheads
. Thus, for example, the
Great Seal of the United States
, among other
uses, appears on the reverse of the
one-dollar bill
; and several of the
seals of the U.S. states
appear on their
respective
state flags
. In Europe, although
coats of arms
and
heraldic badges
may well feature in such
contexts as well as on seals, the seal design in its entirety rarely appears as
an emblem.

The study of seals is known as
sigillography
or sphragistics.