Wax for historical seals

Wax for Roman seals

For this purpose you will find authentic wax strips in a great variety of colours. You simply need to heat up the wax strips until they start to form drops, then press the seal into the drops on the envelope.

Even ... during the Middle Ages wax seals had been used for documents, contracts of all sorts. The pope like the Emperor and those whom they allowed to use wax seals made use of it – the different colours indicating who sealed the contract.
Red seals were reserved for the Emperor and kings (who, in principle, could also allow others to use this colour on their behalf),
Green seals were reserved for monasteries and church foundations,
White seals were reserved for free cities,
Black seals were used by the patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand Master of the spiritual orders of the knights, and, today, is still used for consolation letters.

Roman seals

When Roman scribes wanted to make sure that nobody read their texts they did not only close the wax tablets with a cord, but also used a capsule with sealed wax.

Your personal seal capsule

The Roman-Shop offers simple seal capsules, also with email inserts, reproducing authentic Roman capsules that date back to the Empire (1st to 4th c. A.D.). The lid of our Roman seal capsules has been taken from an original one of which a small number has survived.

Seal with a capsule

The Roman parcel of wax tablets has been bound in form of a cross made of a cord. The cord, then was pulled through holes in the tablet into which seal capsules had been inserted and in which the cord was knotted. We can assume that the seal was pressed into the seal wax and the hole closed with a lid. In some of the surviving lids, we can still see the rests of the original seal wax. When the wax tablet was opened, the capsule broke, noted in Latin as “the seal is broken” (cerea turbata est).