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Family seals were normally used for sealing an envelope with your initials, so that the receiver would know who wrote it. Our family seal has one of our ancestor's initials on it and BLACK in Russian (our last name is Black). Black in Russian is spelt ??????? and pronounced 'chernyee'. All seals are different shapes. The cylinder seal (3-5cm) could be placed on a fastening pin, a chain or even a ring! Seals stopped being used by about the 20th Century, when envelopes and post arrived. In Ancient Egypt, seals were used on rolled-up papyrus or scrolls. In the 19th Century, people started using seals on envelopes. In the 21st Century email and text were invented, so using seals stopped altogether. In 1902, our ancestors moved to England from St Petersburg, Russia and brought with them this family seal.