A cord of three strands: the verse behind our mark

The first sketches had a cross in them. Most of them did. It is the obvious move for a shop like ours, and obvious is not always wrong — a cross is the most legible symbol in the world, and nobody has to be told what it means.

But we drew about forty of them over two weeks, and every single one looked like a hundred other shops. Put a cross in a circle, set it in a serif, and you have the logo of a funeral home, a Bible college, a small-town church newsletter and roughly a third of the Christian gift market. There was nothing wrong with any of them. There was nothing ours about them either.

Then someone read Ecclesiastes out loud in the studio, because we had run out of ideas and were reading things out loud.

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Why that verse

Two things happened at once. The first is that it is a verse about strength through being joined — which is exactly what we wanted the shop to be about, and not something a cross says on its own. A cross says what was done for you. A cord says what holds you now.

The second is that it draws. Three ellipses, rotated a little off vertical, crossing near the middle. Two wide ones leaning against each other and a narrow one standing up through the centre. It reads as a flower if you are relaxed about it, as a knot if you look longer, and as three separate lines only if you really try. That ambiguity is doing work: it is the thing that makes people look twice.

Three readings, all of them welcome

We were careful not to pin it down. Read the three strands as Father, Son and Spirit if that is where you go first. Read them as you, the people around you, and God — which is closer to what the passage is actually arguing. Read them as the three-fold cord of a marriage, which is where most people first hear the verse, usually at a wedding, usually badly amplified.

All three are in there. Choosing one and printing it under the mark would have shut the other two off, and a symbol that only means one thing stops being a symbol and starts being a label.

Drawing it properly

The version you see took a further three weeks, almost all of it on stroke weight. Too thin and it disappears at the size it needs to work at — a 12mm foil stamp on a candle lid. Too thick and the crossings turn into blobs where the lines meet, which is the exact place the whole idea lives.

We settled at a hair over 2pt at print size, with the three loops sharing one weight so no strand reads as more important than the others. That last part mattered more than it sounds. An earlier draft had the centre loop heavier, and it immediately looked like two supporting characters holding up a lead. Which is not what the verse says.

And the words underneath

The tagline came second and, honestly, a little by accident. Collect, curate, create — it is just how the shop works. We collect from makers we know, we curate down hard, and whatever is left we make ourselves.

It was only when it was set under the mark that someone pointed out we had written three words under three loops. We had not planned that. We kept it, and we set it in a mono face so it reads as a working note rather than a slogan — the underscores are there for the same reason.

Where the cross went

It is still here. It is on the letterpress prints, on the pendants, on the packing tape, and as a small ornament between sections on this website. We did not run away from it.

It is just not the logo, because Ecclesiastes 4:12 got there first, and because the strongest brands tend to be built on the thing you actually believe about how to work rather than on the most obvious available symbol.