Before there was 😂, ❤, 🙄 or the passive-aggressive 👍, people had other ways of saying an awful lot without actually saying anything at all. They had intaglios. I’ve lovingly dubbed them “the emojis of yesteryear” for as long as I can remember, and I still think it has a rather nice ring to it.
Because essentially that’s exactly what so many of these tiny carvings are. Symbols chosen to communicate love, hope, loyalty, freedom, courage, grief, desire, wit, all those wonderfully complicated human emotions we’ve always felt compelled to share. Except rather than tapping a symbol on a screen, they pressed them into hot wax to seal letters. So essentially the wax seal is the emoji equivalent of tapping the screen for the yellow smiley. And I know which I’d rather have.
Bauble Magpie’s Emojis of Yesteryear
The three I’ve chosen to show you today are particularly wonderful examples because not one of them needs a single word to make its point. You just have to know how to read them.
Fly Like a Kite
🪁 2026 emoji: Freedom. Go with the free flyin’ flow. This wonderfully dark Georgian/Early Victorian agate depicts a kite, the bird of prey, not the thing you lost in a tree when you were seven. Kites ride the currents with an almost effortless grace, which has connected them with freedom, buoyancy and going where life takes you.
They’re also rather selective about their company and have historically had a reputation for pinching things to build their nests. Free-spirited, effortlessly cool and only interested in hanging out with their own kind?
For the Magpie who could perhaps do with loosening her grip on the reins and letting the current take her somewhere interesting.
Take a look at the Fly Like a Kite Intaglio.
Challenges Overcome
🐓 2026 emoji: I went through it. I conquered it. I’m still here. A cockerel might not immediately scream profound personal talisman, but this is precisely why I spend my life disappearing down symbolism rabbit holes.
The cockerel was sacred to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing, and there’s something rather beautiful about pairing him with the idea of overcoming adversity. He is also, of course, the bird that announces the dawn.
Darkness has passed. Morning has come. Which makes this, for me, less a symbol for someone in the battle and more a symbol for the person triumphantly standing on the other side of it. You endured. You healed. You made it through and now the sun is coming up.
Take a look at the Challenges Overcome Intaglio
Bone Head
🦌 2026 emoji: Strength. Renewal. Quiet power. No motto or clever little phrase, just the unmistakable bust of a stag carved into stone.
And really, he doesn’t need much else. The stag has long carried associations with strength, nobility and renewal, with those extraordinary antlers, shed and regrown, giving him a particularly lovely connection to regeneration and new chapters.
For me, there’s also something wonderfully self-possessed about him. Not aggressive. Not performative. Just quietly powerful.For the Magpie who has shed an old version of herself, grown something new and intends to wear her antlers accordingly.
Take a look at the Bone Head Intaglio.
There’s nothing quite like jewelry with something to say about its wearer
We talk about symbolism as though it’s something ancient and academic. But we still embrace symbols like this every single day.
❤️ means love.
🔥 means desire.
🕊️ means peace.
We see an image and instantly understand that it represents something much bigger than itself. The Victorians weren’t so different. Their emojis were just considerably better made and more beautiful in my humble opinion. And when one of these antique intaglios becomes your ring or pendant, that language becomes even more personal. Someone else might simply see a bird, a cockerel or an arrow.
But you know what it really means…
And that little piece of carved stone becomes shorthand for an entire story that doesn’t need explaining to anybody else. Which, really, is what I’ve always believed talisman jewellery should be. An emoji of yesteryear, carrying a piece of history and a message that still feels entirely relevant and like it was made just for you today.
With love and shiny things, always
Emma and the Bauble Magpie Team
