We like to think of branding as a modern invention—a part of our sophisticated media age, something you might even have to study to understand—but back in what we used to call the "Dark Ages", they were just as aware of the usefulness of creating images of themselves for others to absorb. The technology to do it was a little more basic. All it required was a suitable carving or cast and a lump of wax, and you could send your self-presentation around the world, or at least around Europe, where its imagery would be "read" just as though it were text.
According to "Good Impressions, Image and Authority in Medieval Seals", a small but nicely formed and informative exhibition now at the British Museum, by about the year 1100 people recognised the authority of seals. So you get a tiny lead pilgrim flask of about 1185 from the shrine of Thomas Beckett at Canterbury. It would have been used for a mix of holy water and a drop of a saint's blood. The back has a seal design showing the saint's murder and in Latin "Thomas is the best doctor of the worthy sick". Simple but clear, and apparently very effective branding.
It wasn't just saints who had their own brand, or even kings. Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciar to Henry II moaned, "It was not the custom of old for every lesser knight to have a seal, they are proper only for kings and great men."
Gosh, even women got into the branding game. My favourite is definitely that of Elizabeth of Sevorc (right), who is unusually shown on horseback, sitting tall and proud on her fine steed. Unusually, there's no mention of her male relatives in the inscription. She was definitely asserting her status as an important, independent, almost certainly land-holding, woman.
You didn't even have to be that grand to have your own brand. There's a much humbler seal, made of lead rather than the fine gilt bronze of Elizabeth's, of Christine de Waig (left). She's described as "daughter of Roger", and the piece is dated 1200-1300. Even though she's identifying with a man, the exhibition suggests she might have continued to use it, to assert her identity separately, even after she was married.
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