Hasten Slowly Postcard

Hasten Slowly, or Festina Lente, is a classical oxymoronic adage used widely throughout history. Adopted as a motto by emperors Augustus and Titus, Cosima I de’ Medici and the renaissance printer Aldus Manutius, the words seem even more poignant today, in our world of fast-paced technology.

Symbolically depicted as a dolphin entwining an anchor, a tortoise with a sail or a hare with a snail shell upon it’s back, the words urge us to perform our actions with a balance of diligence and urgency. Rushed tasks lead to mistakes; do things well from the start, in the correct order and the results will stand the test of time.

This resonates with the stone carver, whose work will long outlive her. Our inscriptions do not bear a footnote of ‘Cut in only a week! Wow!’, instead they quietly travel through time, showing only what we put in - the skills that took years to master, the days finessing a design and the weeks spent carefully cutting away the blank slate to leave an inscription that is the reflection of the best we have in us at that moment.