The Anchor

“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.”
— Hebrews 6:19

When being a Christian could get you killed, the cross went underground and the anchor took its place.

Rome's early believers scratched anchors into the walls of the catacombs. An anchor was nothing — a sailor's mark, a merchant's mark, a shape nobody looked at twice in a port city. But the cross is already in it. The shank, the crossbar, the arms curving up. You could carve one in plain sight and only the people who knew would know.

They have been counted by the hundreds in the burial tunnels under Rome, cut over the names of the dead before it was safe to cut anything else.

Eighteen hundred years later it still means the same two things at once, and a man wearing one still knows which he means.

This one keeps the rope, wound at the crossbar and knotted the way it would be on a working boat.

Hold fast.

Specifications

• Solid .999 fine silver, hand poured
• 42mm tall × 29mm wide
• Hand-oxidized recesses, polished high points
• 4mm black braided leather cord, 22", gunmetal magnetic barrel clasp
• Signed Certificate of Authenticity
• Poured and finished in Northfield, Vermont

Worn for a lifetime. Passed to the next.