Stamp piston

The secretariat of the city council created numerous documents of varying importance and value to the city and members of the city community, which made seals of at least two kinds a necessity. The grand or main seal was reserved for authenticating documents of the highest importance, while the lesser, so-called secret seal was used to stamp less important documents. The stamp of Szczecin's secret seal from the first half of the 15th century is undoubtedly one of the finest monuments of Szczecin's sigillography. It depicts the city’s coat of arms – a crowned griffin's head surrounded by stars. The field of the seal is also surrounded by tracery motifs, which – along with lilies and crosses – separate the individual words of the inscription around the edge, made in Gothic minuscule, informing that this is the secret seal of the city of Szczecin. There is also a second, smaller griffin head on the edge, probably only to fill in the empty field, which formed after the engraved word turned out to be too short. The seal was made with extreme attention to detail – the relief is deep and the head of the griffin is very elaborate. This shows that the city council did not commission just about any craftsman to make its seal, instead entrusting the task to an expert. The numerous details of the seal, in particular the feathers on the griffin's head, show that it was made by a skilled engraver or goldsmith. It is also unusual that the seal was made out of silver, rather than bronze, which was the basic material used to manufacture seals – this demonstrates that Szczecin was a wealthy city. The expertise of the craftsman is also confirmed by the shape of the handle on the reverse side. It is carefully profiled with a subtle hole for threading the cord.

Mieszko Pawłowski