A hand-engraved monogram is cut with a graver pushed through the gold by hand, which is why the strokes swell and taper like a pen stroke and why the floor of each cut is faceted enough to throw light back. A machine cuts one width at one depth and does neither. The letters here are interlaced into a cipher, drawn to read as a pattern first and as initials second, which is how monograms were meant to work for most of a century.