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Say how you feel with acrostic jewellery

Acrostics are now a relatively unusual theme for clients requesting bespoke jewellery but the appeal is still clear for those wishing to make a very personal declaration of love.

Acrostics – spelling a message using the first letter of a series of words – have a long history, though the practice of incorporating this in jewellery probably dates to the 18th century at the earliest.

Origins of acrostics

The word ‘acrostic’ derives from a Greek term meaning ‘top of a verse’, indicating that the device has been in use for three millennia or more. In the Old Testament, several of the Hebrew psalms use acrostics, with each line or verse beginning with successive letters of the alphabet, perhaps to convey a sense of God’s completeness. Fearful of persecution, early Christians used to identify themselves to each other with a fish symbol (still used today, though for different reasons), because the Greek letters of the word fish (‘ichthus’) are the first letters of the words ‘Jesus Christ, God’s son, saviour’. It is entirely possible that the use of acrostics is as old as the first alphabet, which was probably developed from more complex scripts around 1800 BC.

Read between the lines

Acrostics were commonly used in poems and letters to convey secret messages. Many Victorian poems, perhaps most famously ‘Elizabeth’ by Edgar Allen Poe, hide the names of people or places, or express love for someone.

The first modern use of acrostic jewellery seems to date to late-18th or early-19th century France, and quickly spread to England and America. Words would be spelled out using the first letter of a series of stones; for example, ‘Love’ could be spelled with lapis, opal, vermeil and emerald. Napoleon Bonaparte had a number of pieces made to commemorate special events. Acrostics’ popularity were driven by a sense of romance and secrecy, although they were used more widely than this – at one time, some women would even select a stone to wear based on the first letter of the day of the week.