Mathghamhain – Page 15 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

August Additions to the Traceable Art

Over the last six weeks, I’ve added one hundred and fifty new images to the Traceable Heraldic Art collection, which now contains over 3,600 pieces of armorial clip art for use by heralds and scribes.

Some of the additions are drawn from period sources, including batches from Stemmario Trivulziano and the Mamluk Emblems Online Corpus, while others are new original art contributed by artists including Ræv Kolfinnsson and Jessimond of Emerickeskepe.

I’ve divided the “Food and Farming” section into two volumes, both to make it easier to find items related to a particular interest and because the software I use to assemble the collection works more efficiently when individual volumes are less than two hundred pages. Continue reading “August Additions to the Traceable Art”

Unusual Weights for the O&A Complex Search

When using the complex search form in the SCA’s online ordinary & armorial, each line of the search is typically coded with a weight of 1, and most people never change this value, but setting these weights to other values do allow for some interesting search techniques.

A while ago, I asked on SCA Heraldry Unofficial Chat about how how different folks used these weight fields, and have summarized that discussion below.

Weight values are limited to non-negative integers, and may optionally be prefixed with a “+” or “&” character. Continue reading “Unusual Weights for the O&A Complex Search”

A History Of The Digital O&A From LoAR Cover Letters

I recently spent some time searching the archive of Laurel letters for early mentions of the Society’s digitized ordinary and armorial, and will share my notes here in case they are of interest to anyone else.

The first efforts to organize a coordinated armorial seem to have begun in 1971.

An Introduction to the Pictorial Dictionary & the SCA Heraldry Wiki

Mistress Sofya La Rus recently filmed this video, edited and produced by Lord Ivo Blackhawk, which provides a brief introduction to two useful online resources: the Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry at mistholme.com, and the SCA Heraldry Wiki at scaheraldry.info.

DMCA Takedown Notices

Sadly, even material which is freely available online is routinely subject to violations of its license or terms of use.

While the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art doesn’t generate any revenue, and all of its contents are available for use without charge, most of the items which were created in recent decades are still subject to copyright, and are distributed subject to certain license terms. Continue reading “DMCA Takedown Notices”

Updating the O-and-A Database

On July 25, 2020, Master Herveus d’Ormonde led a few interested heralds through an online session in which we were able to observe core portions of his workflow as Morsulus Herald, watching as he applied the changes from a recent LoAR to the O&A master database and published the changes to the public O&A web site.

I am attaching my notes from this session below in hopes that they might be of interest to other members of the community, although this is admittedly a fairly-obscure topic with a limited audience. Continue reading “Updating the O-and-A Database”

Installing the O-and-A Search on Your Web Site

The Ordinary and Armorial of the SCA is a web-based searchable database of the names and armory registered by the SCA College of Arms over the last five decades.

At its core, the O&A consists of a 125,000-line pipe-delimited text file named “oanda.db” which typically contains a line for each registered item. (Although note that in some cases a name and associated armory are bundled together into a single line, and other times updates result in there being a couple of lines that document a single registration.)

Generally speaking, nearly everyone interacts with this data via the O&A web site, maintained by the SCA’s Morsulus Herald, but in theory you could just read through that text file to find relevant records, or utilize one of the small number of third-party applications which transform the oanda.db file into an e-book or import it into a third-party database engine.

The software that powers the O&A web site is open-source, and packaged in a way that makes it easy to install, as long as you have a machine that meets these requirements: Continue reading “Installing the O-and-A Search on Your Web Site”

What Does the Brigantia Herald Do?

On April 25, 2020, as part of the East Kingdom Officer Schola online event, Master Malcolm Bowman led a session reviewing the role of two kingdom-level heraldic positions he holds, including that of Brigantia Herald.

I am attaching my notes from this session below in hopes that they might be of interest to other members of the community, but please be aware that this is not an official transcript and may contain errors or omit relevant details.

The Brigantia Herald has overall responsibility for all heraldic activity in the kingdom, including courts, events, and submissions. Continue reading “What Does the Brigantia Herald Do?”

What Does the Eastern Crown Herald Do?

The Eastern Crown Herald is the East’s royal court herald, sometimes styled “Vox Regis,” or voice of the crown. Continue reading “What Does the Eastern Crown Herald Do?”

Rules on the Appearance of Armorial Displays Within Armory

Some elements are so distinctively suggestive of independent armorial displays that there are rules that limit their use as part of a larger design.

Inescutcheons, cantons, pennons, and sails should not look like they are displaying secondary arms that the submittor has no right to display.
— [Artair MacArtair of Orkney, Return, May 1983 LoAR]

As noted above, this protection applies to single escutcheons, cantons, banners, and sails, but the rules are slightly different for each of these shapes, as I will catalog further below. Continue reading “Rules on the Appearance of Armorial Displays Within Armory”