# A letter for one person

Write by hand or type. Fold the message and give someone the link. Your words stay on the same sheet as they unfold it.

The message is kept in the link, not an account. Anyone with the link can read it. The seal is only a drawing and does not stop anyone opening the letter. The page sends no read receipts. The link preview does not show the contents of the letter.

## When a letter served as its own envelope

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, ready-made gummed envelopes were not yet for sale. Many letters were folded from the very sheet they were written on.

In one spiral lock documented by historians, a strip left attached to the sheet passed through slits in the packet and through itself. Opening it could tear the strip and leave traces on the paper.

On a letter Catherine de’ Medici sent in 1570, researchers estimate that up to 99% of the paper lock survives, scattered in fragments across the sheet. Wax and extra pieces of paper were part of its closure. The fold here adapts some documented principles; it does not reproduce her letter, seals or exact lock.

[The research and original documents](https://bl.iro.bl.uk/entities/publication/3260f5fb-46d3-434e-ae13-aba7c004a8d3)

The sheet is divided into panels that rotate along its creases; a strip cut from the margin locks the packet. Each mark remains attached to the place where it was made. The wax seal is a drawing: it does not show whether the letter has been opened before and does not prove who sent it.

Researched, curated and published by Marius Comper — https://mariuscomper.uk/en/