Drawn to her for years, I set out to create a seal that felt classical and enduring, a figure suspended between worlds. The mermaid, after all, belongs to both land and sea. She moves through visible life and unseen depths with equal fluency, attuned to emotion, intuition, and the currents beneath the surface. In some unspoken way, she feels familiar. As though we, too, carry a trace of her within us.

It was only later, upon encountering Fairbairn’s Book of Crests, that I realized the design I had drawn already existed within the Hastings family crest. Nearly identical. Unknowingly, I had traced something that had been there all along. A moment of recognition that felt less like coincidence and more like return.

The first edition of the Hastings Mermaid has now been fully discontinued, having sold out earlier this year. This second edition follows the original heraldic orientation, her tail turned in the opposite direction, her comb lowered rather than raised. There is greater refinement throughout, most notably in the fin and in her expression, lending her a sense of movement, presence, and life.