RosenThe Rosen Association, Seattle

Constituted 14 March 1911 · amended 1946 and 2024

The Articles of Association

Fourteen Articles, written by eleven makers in one evening and signed before midnight. The original hangs in the entrance hall of the House, under glass, beside the Copyist.

A facsimile of the Articles, with the founders’ signatures (PDF, 2 pages)

  1. Article I No piece shall leave the house without a true account of its making, signed by its makers.
  2. Article II The house shall strike one mark upon everything it makes, and shall strike no other house’s mark beside it.
  3. Article III The members of the Association shall be its Associates, being makers elected for life by the Associates then living, from among those who have worked at the bench of the house.
  4. Article IV The house shall keep the means to mend whatever it has made.
  5. Article V The Associates shall elect from among themselves a President, in the month of March in every seventh year. Should the votes be equal, the eldest Associate shall decide.
  6. Article VI The President shall be assisted by a Court of five directors, one of whom shall be an Associate elected by the others, that the bench be heard at the table.
  7. Article VII A Registrar shall keep the Register of Provenance and sign the last line of every certificate. The Register shall not be closed while the house stands.
  8. Article VIII The house shall keep a reserve sufficient to service every piece it has made for twenty-five years without a further sale. (Adopted 1946.)
  9. Article IX A piece mistaken for a living thing has not failed. It is finished only when it has been declared.
  10. Article X No maker shall be asked to sign for work they did not do, nor be permitted to refuse to sign for work they did.
  11. Article XI The house shall answer every letter within the week.
  12. Article XII Apprentices shall be taught by hand and examined by the Master of the Atelier. An apprentice who fails shall be written to.
  13. Article XIII The house shall not sell its name, nor lend it.
  14. Article XIV These Articles may be amended by two thirds of the Associates. Article I shall not be amended.

Amendments

Amendments to the Articles
YearArticleAmendment
1946VIIIThe reserve adopted, after the house came within a month of closing in 1933.
2024IXA note added: “declared” includes declaration to any public register on which the piece is entered. Adopted in June 2024, when the Owl was licensed.

On Article IX

Article IX is the one visitors ask about. It was written by Euphemia Aske, who spent her working life making eyes that people mistook for living ones, and who held that a maker who achieves that has done her work well and is then obliged to say so. The house reads it as a single rule with two halves. The first half is a compliment. The second is a duty.

It is the reason every Rosen piece carries a certificate, the reason the Owl carries a plaque and the reason the house asked the Turing Registry to license a bird. It is also the reason the house recalled the Nexus-6. A thing that cannot be told apart from a person cannot be declared, however good its papers, if nobody can tell which person to declare.