Well well well. What do we have here?

Yeppers, it’s an incredibly rare Tassie seal in the best blue hue that sets us all aquiver.

Depicted we have a crestfallen Cupid, holding an upturned eternal flame which is extinguished on the ground. His poor little wings downturned.

But what the Christopher Biggins does it mean?

Well. The word has to be bittersweet.

The imagery is unarguably melancholic. The dying of the light, the sorrowful and despairing way in which Cupid leans his head on his hand. There’s a resignation, a certain defeat to it all. Pure sorrow.

The counterbalance, the redemptive factor is the motto ‘Not Lost But Gone Before’. Which we take as a hopeful, if bittersweet, testimony to the notion that those who we love and who have passed on are not forever departed, taken from us for all eternity. They have merely moved to a new place, presumably heaven, before us.

The hope, therefore, of reunification on the other side of the mortal door. Which we think is heart wrenchingly beautiful and poetic.

It calls to my mind the poem ‘Death Is Nothing At All’ by Henry Scott-Holland (published in 1919):

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

The phrase ‘Not lost but gone before’ is commonly found on antique mourning jewellery from the Georgian and Victorian eras, particularly lockets and rings. It was seen as a comforting expression of remembrance and a way to publicly display grief and respect for the deceased. The phrase is occasionally found on antique wax seals where it would have been used for expressing condolences and remembrance on correspondence. We re-imagined this special Tassie seal into a wearable piece of talisman jewelry for today by setting it as a Classic Intaglio Pendant for our client.