Seal Name “La Mer”

Category

Auspicous Sayings Seal, 吉語印 Jiyu Yin

Material

Lapis Lazuli

Impression.

Outline cut "La Mer"over a horizon line suggesting sea and an indication of clouds.

General Description

Stone almost flat and polished on one side natural contours on other three sides.

Translation

The Sea (French)

Notes

The azure blue of the ultramarine, “the stone from beyond the sea”, the cloud like calcite and the shimmering pyrite of this stone made me think of the song written in 1945 by Charles Trenet. Once the association had formed in my mind I could not shake it and heard the tune whenever I looked at it. All my life somehow it has been a wistful air one hears, or imagines hearing, faintly through an open window, round the next corner or hummed by a passer-by and often in the background on film and TV. It evokes my childhood and the warm south inducing a not unpleasant melancholy. I like it best sung by Trenet or as an instrumental by Django Reinhardt and least in any of the ghastly Anglicised variants. It really would not seem right to print it in cinnabar so I made my own blue seal paste with ultramarine pigment and ground nacre.

Dimensions in millimetres

Height

55 mm

Width

30 mm

Depth

36 mm