Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Arkham Seal, Part Three And A Half

The incredibly talented Andrew Leman of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society left a note on the earlier discussion of the Arkham seal that I wanted to draw attention to.

The HPLHS has been at work on an Arkham seal as well, and I've just updated our site with that addition and an update to the Arkham Library Card PDF, as previously promised. Although our seal looks different (and borrows from different sources), it contains many of the same concepts and the two are quite compatible. Both feature agriculture, shipping, and a nod to Miskatonic.


Mr. Leman's interpretation of the seal, and the downloadable library card featuring it, is available over here at the HPLHS website.

Raven, another talented Mythos fan and frequent contributor here, has another take on the seal over here. There's an in-depth discussion of the symbolism and details of it in this discussion thread on Yog-Sothoth.

I love comparing how three different people drawing on the same resources can create similar, but unique interpretations of the same item. I've said before that Mr. Leman was one of the primary inspirations for this site, and his excellent work speaks for itself. Raven has graciously contributed a huge amount of printable paper items to the site, and his in-depth analysis of Mythos minutia has been invaluable.

Embarrassingly enough, I'm still mucking about with my own interpretation of the seal.

Update: Raven put together this very handy side by side comparison of the three seals.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Each of you should choose the era that your seal comes from, (1890's, 1920's etc) as if they were all the same seal that had just evolved over time.

Raven said...

Unfortunately, that iimmgg link is still blocked. Try http://tinyurl.com/arkham-seal for my seal.

Looking at the detailed background of Andrew's seal -- hey, neat, it even shows the Deep One offering the villagers gold for breeding rights.... but doesn't that belong on the Innsmouth seal instead? ;)

What we really should have is a picture of all three seals lined up together!

Mik said...

Awesome work by everyone involved.