Harp Emoji Coming Soon, Thanks To Mary Lattimore And Theo Schear
Your Joanna Newsom fanposting is about to be so lit. The Unicode Consortium, whose Unicode text encoding standard governs digital text and emojis on devices worldwide, has approved the addition of a harp emoji. It’s expected to be in circulation early next year.
In 2019, filmmaker Theo Schear and harpist Mary Lattimore cowrote a proposal to the Unicode Consortium urging the adoption of a harp emoji. As Schear explained to Pitchfork, “I’m a fan of Mary Lattimore’s music, and her music inspired me to take harp lessons back in 2019. I had co-authored a handful of emoji already, and I’m always looking for new emoji to propose.”
Schear added that his friend Jennifer 8. Lee, the vice chair of Unicode’s emoji subcommittee, encouraged him to pursue the proposal even though musical instruments weren’t being accepted at the time: “Because of the harp’s relevance globally, she figured it would be accepted whenever they came back to musical instruments. I was eager to etch my name in the semiotic history of my favorite instrument, and I’m now very honored to be a co-author with Mary.”
Although Schear handled most of the work, Lattimore’s involvement was crucial, he said: “Her authorship was more of an endorsement really, in the way that producers attach big-name executive producers to movies.” Lattimore told Pitchfork, “I was delighted when Theo asked me to endorse this emoji proposal. We harpists have been waiting for this moment!”
Next time you’re visited by an angel, you’ll know exactly how to post about it on social media.