Before envelopes existed, cleverly folding up a letter was a crucial privacy tactic. Only now are we learning what those techniques were, and what they reveal about cultures around the world. Imagine ...

Hundreds of years ago, people developed ingenious methods to secure their letters from prying eyes – and they did it with only paper, adhesive and folds. Late at night on 8 February 1587, an ...

Mary, Queen of Scots used a “spiral locking” technique to seal the last letter she wrote before her execution, indicating that she wanted the contents to remain secret, according to research published ...

In 1587, hours before her beheading, Mary, Queen of Scots, sent a letter to her brother-in-law Henry III, King of France. But she didn’t just sign it and send it off. She folded the paper repeatedly, ...

In a steady, stately script, an anonymous Dutch writer living around 1700 wrote a letter: “I never thought you’d be such a miserable dog,” it went. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it to my ...

Keys: How to Use this Book -- Introduction to Letterlocking -- Building the Story of Letterlocking -- Reading Letterlocking Features -- Locking Mechanisms, Security, and Authentication -- Distinctive ...