Letterlocking: "Tuck and Seal," Italy (1580s)

Modelled after Tomaso di Levrieri’s letter to Fra San Piero ( 9 July 1589), Vatican Apostolic Archive, Fondo Veneto, Sezione II, container 670, letter 3.

The "tuck and seal" is one of the longest letterlocking variations that persists in Western letterlocking traditions. The letter becomes its own envelope by inserting one side of the tri-folded letterpacket into the pocket of the other. In this example, warm sealing wax was placed between the overlapping areas of the packet and a signet tool was impressed onto the outermost paper flap to create a papered seal, securing the letter shut and authenticating it. This example has little-to-no built-in security features.

Letterlocking refers to the act of folding and securing an epistolary writing substrate (such as papyrus, parchment, or paper) to function as its own envelope or sending device. Letterlocking is a subcategory of a 10,000-year document security tradition, ranging from Mesopotamian clay bullae (8,000 BCE) to Bitcoin paper wallets (2009). Letterlocking also refers to the discipline which studies the technologies and traditions of epistolary security and privacy. Locked letters are just one of some 250 legal and accounting documents and handbound books in the Fondo Veneto, Sezione II, Vatican Apostolic Archive and were used to store information from the tenth to seventeenth centuries. Like letterlocking, these testify to the ways people engineered documents to ensure the security of their communications. Videos on the Letterlocking channel show how other legal and accounting archival letters and bindings from the Fondo Veneto Sezione II function, including the "filza," letters stored in textile bags, “gathered and tied” bindings, and more.

We have news! Since this filming, our team of 11 researchers worked together to read an unopened letter virtually – the words and the folds – for the first time, without ever breaking its seal. What does the letter say? Head to our website https://www.letterlocking.org to learn all the details and celebrate the launch of letterlocking! Read our findings in our Nature Communications article, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21326-w. Visit our Dataverse, our open repository for data collected for this project: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/uh.

Produced by MIT Video Production. Directed and demonstrated by Jana Dambrogio. Funded by Dambrogio and MIT Libraries. Special thanks to Ayako Letizia, MIT Video Production staff, Mary Hurley, The British Academy, and Lincoln College, University of Oxford.

Citation information: Authors: Jana Dambrogio, "‘Tuck and Seal,' Italy (1580s)," Letterlocking Instructional Videos. Unlocking History number 0011/Letterlocking Unique Video number: 0011. Date filmed: June 2014. Duration: 1:53. Date posted: June 2014. Video URL: [Insert URL]. Date accessed: [Date].

Copyright 2016. Jana Dambrogio, Daniel Starza Smith, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). All rights reserved. The following copyrighted material is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Contact the MIT Technology Licensing Office for any other licensing inquiries.

NB: Letterlock responsibly. Be mindful of open flames or hot tools.

To find out more about letterlocking, visit http://letterlocking.org and follow us on social media @letterlocking.

YouTube URL: http://bit.ly/FoldTuckSeal

Видео Letterlocking: "Tuck and Seal," Italy (1580s) канала Letterlocking videos