Croatian Heritage

The Glagolitic
Collection

Before Croatia wrote itself down in Latin letters, it wrote in these.

Twenty-five characters from the angular Croatian hand, cast in solid gold and silver.

A stone arcade in warm Croatian limestone, Adriatic daylight across the floor

What is Glagolitic?

The oldest Slavic script, and the first the Croats used to write their own language.

Warm Croatian limestone with the soft shadow of an arch

Glagolitic was devised in the 9th century by Constantine the Philosopher — Saint Cyril — for a mission among the Slavs of Moravia. It reached the eastern Adriatic and stayed. From the 10th and 11th centuries onward it was the script in which Croatian was first written down, and Croatian scribes kept it in use for close to a thousand years.

After the 12th century they reshaped it. The rounded letters of the earliest manuscripts squared off into an upright, architectural hand — uglata glagoljica, angular Glagolitic — a form found nowhere else. It is that hand these pendants are drawn from.

9th centuryConstantine the Philosopher devises the script for the Moravian mission.
c. 1100The Baška tablet is carved for the church of St Lucy at Jurandvor on Krk. It names King Zvonimir — the first time a Croatian king is named in Croatian.
12th centuryThe angular Croatian form emerges and becomes the national hand.
1248Pope Innocent IV grants Croatian clergy the right to keep their own language and this script in the liturgy.
1905The last Glagolitic missal is printed in Rome.

From script to gold

The historic letter

The character as the scribes drew it, in the angular Croatian hand.
Modelled, not redrawn

The outline is traced straight from the letter — every stroke width and opening kept exactly as the script set them.
Cast in solid metal

Made to order in 9ct yellow gold, 9ct white gold or sterling silver, with the chain loops cast into the letter itself.

Choose your letter

25 characters, in Croatian alphabetical order. Your initial, a family name, a place, a word that matters.

Made to order · up to 12 business days before dispatch

Glagolitic letters in 9ct yellow gold laid on travertine with ivory silk

Every letter is cast from the same script, so a set worn together reads as one hand rather than an assortment.

Why this letter

Most people arrive knowing which one they want. An initial. A surname the family shortened somewhere between Split and Sydney. A child, a partner, a village, a word worth keeping close.

The letter does the work. It is legible to anyone who knows the script and quiet to everyone else — which is usually the point.