During my recent review of precedents on “independent forms of armorial display” I collected a number of decisions that document how the Society’s College of Arms developed its current rules.
Some of those older precedents are no longer relevant, but I figured I’d post them here for those who are interested in the history of this subject. Continue reading “Precedent Review: Can Lozenges, Roundels, and Delfs be Escutcheons of Pretense?”
While putting together my recent summary of which charges can be considered an armorial display, I looked at a lot of old decisions that document how the Society’s College of Arms developed the current rules.
Some of those older precedents are no longer relevant, but I figured I’d post them here for those who are interested in the history of this subject. Continue reading “Precedent Review: Can Plain Lozenges and Roundels Be Used as Fieldless Badges?”
The College of Arms has a rule commonly phrased as “we do not register fieldless badges that appear to be independent forms of armorial display.”
Below, I will attempt to explain this sometimes-confusing rule, catalogue which shapes are considered to be “forms of armorial display,” and note features which cause this rule to not apply. Continue reading “Charges Which Can Appear To Be An Armorial Display in a Fieldless Badge”
The Stemmario Trivulziano is a fifteenth-century Italian armorial featuring the Milan’s ruling family the Visconti and many of their allies and neighbors, believed to be painted by Gian Antonio da Tradate somewhere around around 1465. It takes its name from its owner, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, an independent mercenary commander, who might have made good use of it in identifying military units on the battlefields of Italy.
Unfortunately, for a long time the only way to view the Stemmario Trivulziano has been to either finagle an invitation to the library where it is held inside Milan’s Sforza Castle, or to purchase a lovely bound edition for € 296 (about $350). As those options were both out of the reach of many amateur armorialists, the rest of us had to make do with a few isolated pages which had been scanned and posted online. Continue reading “Downloading the Stemmario Trivulziano”
A couple of months ago I posted about extracting Vigil Raber’s sixteenth-century Wappenbuch der Arlberg-Bruderschaft from the “click to pan and zoom” web interface in which it is hosted, but as it turns out, this is not the only armorial manuscript created by this brotherhood.
For a bit of context, the Brotherhood of St. Christopher was established in the fourteenth century to shelter and assist travelers who were crossing the Alps using the Arlberg pass between Italy and Austria. For hundreds of years, they recorded the identities of armigerous travelers (and donors to the brotherhood) by painting the arms in a series of manuscript guest books.
In addition to Vigil Raber’s manuscript (circa 1548), several other copies of these books have survived to the present, although it appears that others were lost over the centuries. Continue reading “Downloading the Arlberg “Viennese Manuscript””
Bruce Draconarius’s “A Grammar of Blazonry” remains the canonical reference for the structure of blazons in the SCA, despite being more than thirty years old.
However, Bruce did make a few minor adjustments to the document recently, and unfortunately those changes have not yet propagated back to the version on the heraldry.sca.org website.
So I was very pleased when Bruce gave me permission to post the updated version here for ease of use in classes; it’s now available here:
[Update, January 2024:] For the latest version of this document, see Identifying Charge Groups Revisited which simplifies the flow of the questions.
The concept of “charge groups” was developed within Society heraldry to facilitate analysis of armorial designs; although that phrase isn’t used in either period or modern heraldry, it is an effective way of understanding the actual designs that appear in period armory.
The rules for charge group analysis are set forth in Appendix I of SENA. and are covered in the “Armory 102” video class at East Kingdom Herald University.
To start, find a group of one or more charges of a similar size and in a related arrangement, then consider their placement and relationship to other charges to categorize them as follows:
Continue reading “Identifying Charge Groups”Every year on the first of April, the heralds of the Society for Creative Anachronism post mock submissions of historical names and armory. You can browse an archive of these letters via the College of Heralds Imaginary.
We generally attempt to adhere to the conventions expected for normal letters of intent, including source citations and armorial rules, but our standards for documentation and style are somewhat relaxed for this humorous purpose.
Below are entries I came up with this year; some of them appeared on the Eastern and Imaginary letters. You’ll notice that a majority of them reflect the East’s theme for the year: desserts. Continue reading “April First Submissions”
The Livro do Armeiro-Mor (Book of Great Armigers) was painted in Portugal 1506-09 by Jean Du Cros.
As with a number of other period armorials, it has been photographically digitized at high resolution, but the only publicly-available source for these scans is a “click to pan and zoom” web interface operated by the Portuguese Archives Network, which is hard to flip through rapidly, and can’t be accessed when offline at an event. Continue reading “Downloading the Livro do Armeiro-Mor”
Did you know that people in the medieval and renaissance periods sometimes displayed their arms on a heart shape?
For the month of February, the SCA’s #HeraldicLove campaign encouraged people to display their device or populace badge on a heart-shaped field.
In support of this effort, I joined a number of other heraldic artists in creating these images for people both locally and across the Society. Continue reading “#HeraldicLove 2020”
