The Bluestocking

The Bluestocking is the signature of Seamiotics, every seam means something, and the proof of its method: here the colour is the concept.

A sheer fountain-pen blue, with the back seam, heel and reinforced toe in a richer ink blue, the colour ink becomes where it pools and dries. A stocking that evokes writing without ever depicting it: literate, composed, unmistakable to those who notice the ink. In Plain, the fountain-pen blue leg keeps its ink-blue heel and toe, and loses only the seam.

Where the word came from

The Blue Stockings Society met in London from the 1750s, around Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey, and took its name from a garment. Benjamin Stillingfleet came in everyday blue worsted rather than formal black silk, and the informality became the badge. The word that would later mean an unfeminine woman began as a man's cheap wool stocking.

Within a century it had curdled. A bluestocking was no longer good company but a woman whose cleverness had cost her something. The house returns the word to the object.

The Bluestocking is the seed the rest of the imprint grew from. The Signatures are its descendants, and The Black Silk is the garment it was defined against.

Behind the scenes

The Bluestocking is described in the Seamiotics Bible, version 1.4. The Blue Stockings Society, Montagu, Vesey and Stillingfleet are real history.