The New Jersey Seal looks like a complicated and maybe convoluted project on its surface, but when you take a closer look, it becomes clear that in fact a lot of thought went into it and many of the individual pieces do tie together.
New Jersey statutes are pretty specific about the Great Seal. Title 52, §2-1 reads:
The great seal of this state shall be engraved on silver, which shall be round, of two and a half inches in diameter and three-eighths of an inch thick; the arms shall be three ploughs in an escutcheon, azure; supporters, Liberty and Ceres. The Goddess Liberty to carry in her dexter hand a pole, proper, surmounted by a cap gules, with band azure at the bottom, displaying on the band six stars, argent; tresses falling on shoulders, proper; head bearing over all a chaplet of laurel leaves, vert; overdress, tenne; underskirt, argent; feet sandaled, standing on scroll. Ceres: Same as Liberty, save overdress, gules; holding in left hand a cornucopia, or, bearing apples, plums and grapes surrounded by leaves, all proper; head bearing over all a chaplet of wheat spears, vert. Shield surmounted by sovereign’s helmet, six bars, or; wreath and mantling, argent and azure. Crest: A horse’s head, proper. Underneath the shield and supporting the goddesses, a scroll azure, bordered with tenne, in three waves or folds; on the upper folds the words “Liberty and Prosperity”; on the under fold in Arabic numerals, the figures “1776”. These words to be engraved round the arms, viz., “The Great Seal of the State of New Jersey”.
That actually gives us the modern-day (that is, the 1928 design) version of the New Jersey Seal, which can be seen at right here. The lines have been simplified and the colors made more vibrant. In 1965 the colors were specifically defined by law using the Cable color system, with the blue as Cable Number 70087 and the buff as Cable Number 65015, and their hexidecimal equivalents being #2484C6 and #E1B584, respectively.
That there’s a disembodied horse’s head in the New Jersey Seal makes it way too easy for me to do a cheap joke, so I’m going to lampshade the whole thing by making a point of not doing one, and telling you about it here.
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