The Atelier
The house behind the seal.
Root & Seal is a small studio in Boca Raton, Florida. Every emblem is researched, drawn and finished here — one commission at a time, by hand and by name.
Founder & Chief Designer
Erica Bennett
Erica Bennett spent eight years designing and producing golf bags, travel pieces and accessories before founding Root & Seal. Over that period she completed commissions for professional golfers and for corporate houses — work that taught her how a mark behaves once it leaves the bench: how thread reads at arm's length, how hardware wears, and how quickly a badge looks borrowed when it was never drawn for the person carrying it.
Those years were spent putting other people's marks onto objects built to travel. The makers she worked for guarded their emblems carefully — registered, refined, defended. Families, she noticed, were given nothing of the kind. A surname could sit on a headstone for a century without anyone ever drafting it properly. Root & Seal was founded on that discrepancy: a family's name deserves the same permanence granted to a maker's mark, and most families have never had one made for them.
The standard she set for the house is deliberately narrow. Every emblem is drafted, digitised and hand-guided through the loom by a single hand, from commission to delivery. Nothing is handed to a stranger halfway through, and nothing is produced in a batch. A commission is either being worked on or it is waiting its turn — which is the only way an emblem earns the confidence to be handed down.
Questions are answered directly — commissions@rootandseal.com
Why the house was founded
Most families keep photographs. Few keep a mark.
A family's names, places and turning points usually survive only in memory, and memory thins with each generation. A crest holds them in one image — something a grandchild can read without being told.
The house was founded to draw that image properly. Not a downloaded badge or a monogram, but an emblem built from a real lineage, drawn by one hand, recorded in a ledger, and made to be carried rather than filed away.
Drafting & embroidery
From names on a page to thread on cloth.
- I
Research
We begin with the names you submit — siblings, parents, grandparents — and trace origin, occupation, place and any motto or turn of phrase the family already uses. What emerges is a short brief of symbols worth carrying.
- II
Drafting
The emblem is drawn by hand: shield or roundel, charges, division of the field, colour and motto. You receive first sketches early in the commission, and the emblem is revised until approved.
- III
Digitisation
The approved drawing is redrawn as a stitch file — every fill, outline and letterform mapped by hand so the thread reads cleanly at the size it will actually be worn.
- IV
Embroidery
The seal is embroidered in gold-toned, silver-toned or brass metallic-effect thread onto tour-grade synthetic leather, then finished, numbered and paired with its certificate. Standard delivery is six to eight weeks from commission.
Once a house is founded, every descendant may be sealed.
Commission an Emblem