| THE EPISTOLARIAN |

Years ago, my cousin Sarah prepared the house for Thanksgiving.

In the dining room, she made enormous cornucopias from late-Victorian bowls and candelabras, overflowing with grapes and persimmons. Across the tablecloth, she scattered pink bougainvillea boughs she had cut from near the house. Outside, she hung great garlands, and at the apex of each one she affixed a bull skull.

It’s worth noting that Sarah is a cattle rancher and comes from a ranching family. To me, the decorations simply said Festive Rancher Thanksgiving.

But when my uncle Ricki arrived, he saw something else, and it mortified him.

He had lived for many years in Italy and was the person who first showed me the Ara Pacis in Rome. Looking at Sarah’s garlands and skulls, he immediately recognized an image that was thousands of years old.

They were bucrania.

A bucranium is the skull of an ox or bull used as a decorative and symbolic motif in ancient Greek and Roman art. Once you know what you are looking for, you begin to find them everywhere: on temples and altars, carved into sarcophagi and tombs, and incorporated into monuments to the dead. I have even seen them in Irish plasterwork.

Sarah, of course, had not been attempting to put the fun into funeral. She had simply decorated for Thanksgiving with the things she had around the garden and ranch.

And yet, without knowing it, she had assembled something remarkably close to an ancient visual language.

At first glance, a skull seems to offer an obvious symbolism: memento mori. But the ancient meaning of the bucranium is considerably richer than that. Its most enduring association is sacrifice.

Cattle were among the most precious animals that could be offered to the gods. Before sacrifice, they might be adorned with ribbons, flowers, or garlands. The skull, rendered afterward in stone, became an enduring representation of an offering that had already taken place, rather like a Spoerri tableau-piège a couple of millennia early.

It carries a remnant of death, but it is so often surrounded by extravagant life.

Fruit. Flowers. Leaves. Ribbons. Garlands.

It is actually not too far from the festive feeling Sarah had created.

The contradiction is especially striking on the Ara Pacis, the great Augustan monument my uncle had shown me in Rome. There, bucrania are joined by garlands extraordinarily heavy with grain, berries, fruit, and even pinecones.

There are images human beings seem to keep making. We forget where they came from. We change their names. We carry them from temples to houses, from marble to plaster, from Rome to California. Sometimes we understand what we are repeating, and sometimes we simply think the table needs flowers and possibly some skulls.

And now, years later, I am engraving a bucranium of my own.

I like it for the same reason I like Sarah’s Thanksgiving decorations. It feels ancient, sacred, reverential. It is aware of mortality, but also of the riches of life. It reminds me of our continual fascination with gathering the symbols of life and death together, and making something beautiful from them.

A Mini Memento Mori

I made a tiny version of my Skull & Crossbones.

When I was engraving it, I added one little detail that isn’t on the original. What looks like a dot beneath the skull is actually a tiny shell, an old symbol of pilgrimage and the journey through life.

It felt right to tuck it there beneath a memento mori. Remember that you will die, yes, but also remember that you are here, on the journey now.

The Mini Skull & Crossbones is available now.

The Handwritten Life

PRE-ORDER • SHIPPING END OF OCTOBER 2026

I am releasing 150 pre-orders of my book through my own website.

These 150 copies will each be hand-signed by me and will come with a special seal I designed only for the book. The seal will never be offered separately, and I am releasing only 150 of them, one for each of these copies.

This first edition means so much to me. I wrote this book as a manuscript I intend to return to and rework throughout my life. I hope there will be future editions, changed and added to as I grow, which makes these first copies especially precious to me. They are the beginning of a great life's work.

For the seal, I returned to the crescent moon. The crescent moon was the image that inspired my Everlasting Penny, and it returns again in the final chapter of the book. It seemed right that it should also mark these first 150 copies.

The sketch here shows you the composition, but not the finished seal. I am keeping that part a little secret for now. I’ll unveil the finished engraving live as we get closer to the book’s release.

150 signed first-edition books.
150 seals signed in Collector's Register.
And then this seal is retired.

Étui Borders You Might Like

The special rings for the étui are also now available to everyone. These are compatible with all étuis: the first edition, second edition and Kitty Book Pawn.

Other Collector Seals You Might Like

Explore the language of flowers through Kathryn Hastings’ collection of Floriography Seals. Each design draws upon the history, symbolism, and hidden meanings of flowers, handcrafted as a timeless piece to be treasured for generations to come.

Clairy Crow Seal Collect Here

Artichoke Seal Collect Here

Birth of Venus Seal Collect Here

Montecito Chinoiserie Collect Here

Polar Bear Seal Collect Here

Elephant Seal Collect Here

Discover More Collector's Seals Here

Other Hastings Pennies Still Available for Collection

Four Hastings Pennies are still available, but many of our most sought-after designs are approaching sell out. Each piece is crafted in limited quantities, making every remaining penny an opportunity to add a meaningful keepsake to your collection.

Browse the remaining designs and secure your favorites before they are gone.

The Reason and Intuition Penny

Memento Mori Penny Collect Here

Squirrel Oak Wreath Penny Collect Here

Lamb Bouquet Penny Collect Here

With love,

Kathryn