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”
I often encourage people who are beginning the process of designing a personal coat of arms to start by looking at period rolls of arms. Doing so can help to set expectations and provide inspiration that contribute to creating a device that is plausibly medieval — especially if you focus on rolls from the particular time and place that you want to evoke for your persona.
Without this context, it’s easy to fall into the trap of recycling SCA armorial tropes, such as “per bend sinister, an X and a Y counterchanged,” which is almost never found in period coats. Continue reading “A Catalogue Of Period Devices”
Having had some success with the Gelre armorial, I thought I’d take a stab at extracting another renaissance-era armorial that is only available through a “click to pan and zoom” web interface: the Wappenbuch der Arlberg-Bruderschaft, painted by Vigil (sometimes spelled Virgil) Raber around 1550 in Tyrol, on the border between northern Italy and western Austria. Continue reading “Downloading the Wappenbuch der Arlberg-Bruderschaft”
Today, I received an inquiry by email that sent me down an interesting research rabbit hole, and (with the permission of my correspondent) I thought I would share that question and my answer here:
Sir,
The arms of my Achym family of Pelynt in Cornwall, England, are recorded several slightly different ways:
- Arg., a maunch within a bordure Sa. charged with eight cinquefoils of the field.
- Arg., a maunch within a bordure Sa. charged with nine cinquefoils of the field.
- Arg. a maunch maltayle S. within a border of the first charged with cinquefoils of the second (Harl. MS. 1956).
The arms as tricked on an ancient monument in the Pelynt church (ca. 1560) displays nine cinquefoils and the maunch that is shown in Maunch (2) of your online book. Both the maunch and the cinquefoils are displayed in gules.
I have searched to no avail to learn what “maltayle” means. Perhaps it is the rendering of the maunch shown as maunch (2).
Any advice or wisdom will be appreciated.
Ron Hill in Star, Idaho
Engel der Pfau is a skilled fencer with a flamboyant Landsknecht persona who recently became the rapier champion of our local group.
He decided it was time to register a device, and asked for “an angry, fighting, pissed off peacock, his tail plumes out” on a red and black field. Continue reading “Name and Device for Engel der Pfau”
Earlier this year, Alienor and I submitted a pair of very simple field-only badges.
Per pale vert and Or… & Per pale purpure and Or.
I believe these were the last uncharged, plain-line, no-fur, per-pale designs remaining open for registration. Continue reading “Family Per-Pale Badges”
I stumbled upon this armorial design while doing some research into obscure field divisions and decided to add it to my collection of badges.
Per bend sinister argent and gules, issuant from the line of division a bear’s head and a bear’s head inverted contourny counterchanged.
The illustration is adapted from a woodcut by Hans Burgkmair the Elder of his arms, 1516. Burgkmair was a painter and engraver who became a master woodcut printmaker. Continue reading “Bärenschnitt Badge”
Hrotger had been using his name for many years without registering it, but was inspired to do so when he encountered my post of simple field-only armory.
In comparison to the simplicity of his chosen armory, researching his chosen name was significantly more difficult, because documentary sources for Germanic peoples in the period immediately following the collapse of the Roman Empire are somewhat limited, and it is not a culture with which I have much familiarity — an interesting challenge, and a good learning opportunity. Continue reading “Name and Device for Hrotger the Tervingi”
Arthur had already selected a name and armory in consultation with another herald, Francesco Gaetano Grèco d’Edessa, so preparing his submission forms was a simple matter of illustration and onomastic research.
Per fess argent and sable, a cross gules and in chief two fleurs de lys sable.
“Arthur” is an English masculine given name. It is attested to the sixteenth century, appearing in “The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources” (S.L. Uckelman, ed. 2018).
English given names may be borrowed into sixteenth-century German names under the terms of the February 2015 cover letter. Continue reading “Name and Device for Arthur von Eschenbach”
The SCA’s College of Arms processes around three thousand name and armory submissions per year, attempting to ensure that each is properly structured, historically plausible, and unique within the society. A distributed system of commentary allows the burden of this process to be shared among multiple heralds and minimizes the number of things that fall through the cracks.
By commenting on Letters of Intent, first at the kingdom level and then at the Society level, these other heralds help to catch problems, suggest additional resources, and highlight issues that need to be considered during the monthly decision meetings in which the senior-most heralds make the final determinations as to whether submissions will be accepted or returned. Continue reading “An OSCAR Commentary Checklist”
