The History of Signet Rings: From Ancient Rome to Today

The seal comes first, by a long way. In Mesopotamia from around 3500 BCE, administrators used cylinder seals — small stone cylinders carved in reverse and rolled across wet clay, leaving a continuous frieze. They sealed jars, storeroom doors and the clay envelopes that held cuneiform tablets, and they were worn on a cord at the wrist or neck.

Two features of that system never changed in five thousand years. The design had to be cut in reverse, so that the impression read correctly. And the seal's value lay entirely in it being unique and in one person's keeping — which is why loss or theft of a seal was a serious matter, and why so many were destroyed on their owner's death.

Egypt supplied the form we still use. From the Middle Kingdom, scarabs carved on the flat underside with a name or title were mounted on a wire that passed through the beetle lengthways, so that the scarab could be swivelled to face outward as an ornament or inward to press into clay.

By the New Kingdom, around 1500 BCE, the solid metal signet ring proper appears: a broad flat bezel engraved with a cartouche — the oval enclosing a royal name. These are the direct ancestors of every signet ring since.

The authority such a ring carried was literal rather than symbolic. Handing over the royal seal handed over the power to act in the king's name, which is why the gesture appears as a formal transfer of office in ancient texts from Egypt to Persia.

The Greeks turned the seal into a minor art. Working in hardstone — carnelian, chalcedony, jasper, garnet — gem-cutters produced intaglios, designs cut into the stone so that the impression comes out in relief. The best Hellenistic gem engravers signed their work, and their names survive.

Solon is credited with a law forbidding an Athenian gem-cutter from keeping a copy of any seal he had sold — an early and very practical piece of anti-forgery legislation.

Rome made the ring a matter of law. The ius anuli aurei, the right of the gold ring, was originally restricted to senators and magistrates, later extended to the equestrian order; ordinary free citizens wore iron. To be granted the gold ring was to be granted a rank.

The seal itself did the work a signature does now. Wills were sealed by the testator and by witnesses, and Roman law specified how many seals a valid will required. Contracts, letters and storerooms were all closed with wax and a ring. Pliny complained that the practice had reached the point where nothing at all could be trusted unsealed.

The imperial signet was an instrument of state, and its transfer marked a succession — the ring passing to a chosen heir, or being destroyed so that no one else could use it.

After Rome, sealing survived in the Church and in royal chanceries, and then expanded enormously from the eleventh century as written records multiplied. The great seal matrix of a king or abbey was a large disc pressed into wax attached to the document by a cord or tag; the surviving numbers run into the hundreds of thousands across European archives.

Two developments made the signet ring what it is now.

First, heraldry. Once families had hereditary arms, from the later twelfth century, the arms went onto the seal — and the seal became a statement of lineage as well as identity.

Second, the crest. A full achievement will not read at the size of a ring bezel, but a crest — a single figure on a wreath — will. That is the practical reason the crest, rather than the shield, became the element engraved on rings, and why "family crest" drifted into meaning the whole coat of arms.

The medieval convention of destroying the matrix at death was strictly observed for offices. It survives today in the Anulus Piscatoris, the Fisherman's Ring of the Pope, which was historically defaced with a hammer on a pontiff's death; the modern practice is to deface it with a deep cross so that it can never seal again.

By the eighteenth century the signet ring had shifted from an instrument to a convention — but it was still in daily use, because letters were still folded and sealed rather than enveloped. Wafer seals, seal matrices on fobs and desk seals all coexisted with the ring.

The Victorian period fixed the conventions most people still half-remember:

• Gold, with a flat or slightly domed oval bezel, engraved with the crest.
• Worn on the little finger of the left hand in British usage — practical rather than symbolic, since it keeps the bezel clear for pressing and out of the way when writing.
• Given at a threshold — coming of age, a commission, a marriage, or inherited on a father's death. The signet as a rite-of-passage gift dates from here.

It is also the period that produced most of the heraldic imagery still circulating. When a "family crest" print looks Victorian, it usually is.

The gummed envelope, the fountain pen and the typewriter finished the seal as a working technology. What is interesting is that the ring did not follow it into obsolescence.

It survived because it had already stopped being only a tool. A signet is the rare piece of men's jewellery with an unbroken respectable history, it is legible without being loud, and it is one of the few objects routinely passed down a family with the expectation of being worn rather than stored.

Signet rings have come back strongly, and the reasons are worth naming precisely rather than vaguely.

Jewellery has moved away from disposable fashion pieces towards objects intended to last. Engraving has become far more precise, so designs that would have been impossible on a small bezel are now routine. And the form itself is unusually forgiving: it suits any hand, any age and any degree of formality.

There is also the practical revival of sealing itself. Wax and seals are back in use for invitations, certificates and correspondence — and a signet ring is still the most direct way to do it, exactly as it was done in 1400.

If you want the conventions and the practical detail — which finger and which hand, why the engraving has to be cut in reverse to seal, intaglio against relief, which metals hold a crisp impression, and how to actually seal a letter with wax — that is covered in our guide to choosing, wearing and using a signet ring.

The crest is the traditional answer, for the reason given above: it is the one element of an achievement that stays legible at that size.

The Heritage Volume sets out what the historical record holds for a surname, including the arms associated with it. How Your Report Is Made explains exactly which parts come from public records and which our system builds — including the crest itself, which is original artwork rather than a facsimile of an armorial entry.

Also in a narrower band: the women's signet ring.