What’s In A Monogram?

I didn’t quite understand what they were for, why they were necessary or even why they existed. But they were just so intriguing and so beautiful, so satiny and swirly. I remember watching our Swedish housekeeper, Lilly, clamp the end of a huge, fluffy terrycloth under her chin, clap the two sides in on themselves and, with one deft, efficient movement, fold the mammoth towel into a triple-folded, double-layered brick. Then she laid each towel with the satiny, swirly thing centered, prominently facing outward, and perfectly stacked them into precise pyramids on the linen closet shelves.

At this time in my life, I had no idea what a monogram was. Before I’d only seen this closet as a fort where I could hide in secret, now it had new meaning. These scrolls were everywhere—on the napkins we ate with, on the edges of Mom’s tablecloths, on pillowcases and handkerchiefs, and on the wool blankets and quilted winter spreads that lay on our beds after September.During the 1950s, every major shelter, lifestyle and women’s magazine featured countless articles on “monograms.” My mother, not immune to this, seemed not only to have been raised in a world of monograms, but also inherited almost every object in our home emblazoned with someone’s initials. To this day, the flatware, linens, glassware, china and even luggage my brothers and I inherited feature so many different monograms that we need a genealogy chart to figure out whose items we actually ended up with.

Monograms were used by royalty to identify royal property, and became significant during the Middle Ages, when coats of arms employed their ruler’s initials and were embroidered into the royal banners and flags to signify political and military dominance. You might have seen initials used on jewelry, doilies and on the imprint in wax used to seal a secret letter.

In the 18th century, the three-letter monogram emerged, and the 19th century saw to it that it became over-embellished and over-elaborate. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, the formal etiquette applied to the order of the initials in a monogram crystallized. By then, if the monogram represented an individual, then the initial of the first name would be printed on the left, the middle initial on the right and the last name or surname initial would enjoy the central and generally enlarged position. If a couple were married, his first initial would appear on the left, hers on the right, and their shared last initial would appear in the center. With the advent of hyphenated names and same sex marriages, the rules of monogramming have become so intricate that I can only recommend consulting the wonderful Valerie at East Hampton’s Monogram Shop to untangle the web.

In contemporary times, a monogram controversy sprang up before the British royal wedding. Given that royals only use the two initials of their first names in their monograms, William and Catherine’s initials became a conundrum—“WC” (representing water closet, the European word for “toilet”!)—and seemed somehow inappropriate to emblazon on all the royal wedding souvenirs. It was decided to flip these initials to avoid fodder for late night comedians.

Monogramming got so out of hand in the 1950s writer Rosamond Pratt wrote in House Beautiful, “When every possession of a man or a woman is indelibly tattooed, it might suggest that the possessors are afraid that thieves are rampant, or that amnesia would overtake them and that they might forget who they are … ”

Today, a monogrammed or personalized gift will always be one of the most thoughtful of remembrances. You can get almost anything personalized, such as an iPhone case, a laptop, leather goods, key chains, etc. For many of my clients with vacation homes, I have monogrammed kitchen utensils, towels, door mats, chair fabrics, slipcovers and I even custom designed an outdoor bench with the family initial being central to the design. One of our favorite things to do is order colorful towels for our clients’ homes and embroider them with the name of the house or a fun design, like a small pine tree for a house in Northern Michigan. One of our clients requested a welcome mat that said, “Hello Dahling.” These items often evoke a personal welcome to owners and visitors alike when they return to their favorite spot to sip a drink, read a book or just watch nature breeze by.