The Object

An A4 of permanence.

Single-crystal sapphire, held in a codex made for it alone. Made once per commission, and never repeated.

Nº I

Single-crystal sapphire.
A4. Five millimetres.

Colourless grown corundum, nine on the Mohs scale, second only to diamond, the same material trusted in observatory windows. It resists scratching, fading, fire, and the slow erosion of time. It is built to outlast the very languages it is written in.

The front carries the family's chosen words. The back carries the lighthouse mark and the edition number: Nº I, then Nº II, and so on. The front belongs to the family. The back belongs to the record.

Hands holding an engraved sapphire tablet in a library setting
Nº II

In your own words,
in your own tongue.

An inscription can hold a family's own language: a phrase, a saying, a grandparent's line kept exactly as it was spoken. A family passes on not only its wisdom but its culture and its words.

Sapphire keeps all of it intact for the people who will read it long after the rest has been translated, paraphrased, or lost.

Back of the sapphire tablet with the engraved lighthouse mark and edition number, on navy silk
Nº III

The Codex,
opened like a book.

Cream Italian leather without, navy silk within. The Codex opens into two halves that face one another, debossed in gold with the Memoria Aeterna lighthouse.

Each Codex is a numbered edition, bound by hand for a single family. No two are alike.

Closed cream leather Codex with a gold-embossed lighthouse, resting on dark wood
The opened Codex: on the left an original painting carrying the family's chosen symbol; on the right the engraved sapphire tablet with the hand-signed vellum certificate below

On the left, an original painting commissioned for one family alone, carrying a symbol they chose. On the right, the sapphire stands engraved, with the hand-signed vellum certificate resting below it.

Nº IV

Numbered. Signed. Recorded.

Every piece carries its edition number in Roman numerals, engraved on the back and entered in our private record. Beneath the sapphire sits a vellum certificate, hand-numbered and signed by the person who delivers it. No wax seals, no theatre, only a signature and a number meant to outlast us.

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