One of the seemingly-black arts of Society heraldic practice is checking new device and badge designs for conflicts against registered armory.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and still need to ask for help or get other heralds to double-check my work, so I thought it might be useful to post a few links to some of the resources I use to try and remind myself of how the process works.
Continue reading “Armory Conflict-Checking Resources”While there are a wide range of colors that can be used for digital renditions of heraldic art, the set of colors that gets discussed most often in the context of SCA submissions is the one used for OSCAR’s “color checker” display.
When armory images are uploaded to OSCAR, color-checker thumbnails are generated which convert each area to one of these standard tinctures. This doesn’t mean you should use those specific colors in your graphics, but it does simplify things if the colors in your image are not transformed incorrectly.
Continue reading “OSCAR Color Gamuts”Any set of colors can be used as heraldic tinctures if they can be interpreted easily and unambiguously.
Below are examples of color palettes I’ve used for pieces of armory. (Click for a larger image, or download a printable PDF with additional examples.)
Continue reading “Heraldic Tincture Hexcodes”[Update, January 2024:] For the latest version of this document, see Ordinaries, Divisions, and Arrangements Revisited which includes a few additional terms.
While the language of blazon used to describe armory is filled with hundreds of specialized terms which need to be memorized individually, at its core there’s a set of basic terms that describe a matrix of related ordinaries (simple geometric charges defined by their relationship to the field), divisions (lines splitting the field or a charge into two tinctures), arrangements (placements of charges in a group), and orientations (alignments of charges in a particular direction).
Continue reading “Ordinaries and Divisions and Arrangements, Oh My!”Torric inn Björn’s Heraldic Templates was published in 1992 and is, as far as I know, the earliest collection of art distributed specifically to facilitate tracing in construction of society armory.
It has fallen out of circulation and was not been available online until now. Lord Torric has recently granted permission for this material to be re-published, for which he has my sincere thanks.
Continue reading “Heraldic Templates”In addition to 45 pages of traceable art, Torric inn Björn’s 1992 collection of Heraldic Templates also contains a ten-page glossary which contains many of the specialized terms used in society blazons, as well as defining the default position of many charges.
It has fallen out of circulation and was not been available online until now. Lord Torric has recently granted permission for this material to be re-published, for which he has my sincere thanks.
I have converted this document to a web-accessible format and posted it online in hopes that it may prove useful to current practitioners.
Seònaid is new to the society, but has thrown herself into it full throttle, and only a few weeks after her first event had designed a device and come up with an authentic name, making my job as herald relatively easy — with just a little fiddling around the edges we were able to get her ideas into registrable shape and submitted.
Per saltire azure and argent, four mullets counterchanged.
The design Seònaid came up with is nice and simple, as were the best period designs.
The fact that there were no conflicts was a pleasant reminder of how much available design space remains open in the society’s armorial.
Continue reading “Name and Device for Seònaid inghean mhic Aoidh”A recent question on a society heraldry Facebook group about the dimensions of the escutcheon on the submission forms reminded me that I never posted the comparison outline I put together last year showing how it diverges from the geometric construction typically used to create this “heater shield” shape.
The most common technique for drawing a heraldic escutcheon, shown in red below, is to lay out a rectangle which is three times as wide as it is tall, then add a pair of quarter circles below it, enclosing the area where they overlap.
The escutcheon on the society’s submission forms, shown in black below, is slightly different; the curve starts lower and then pinches in more steeply.
Continue reading “The Submission Escutcheon”A member of our province recently asked “What happens if a person with mundane arms joins the SCA? Can they use their mundane arms as SCA arms? And what happens if there’s a conflict with existing Society arms?”
The answer to the first question is found in the Administrative Handbook of the College of Arms, section III.B.7., “Armory Used by the Submitter Outside the Society,” which reads:
Continue reading “On Using Your Mundane Armory”I recently consulted with our provincial seneschal to prepare a submission for a member of his household.
Sable, an eagle Or, orbed, langued, and armed argent, and on a chief Or three lozenges ployé gules.
Josef knew he wanted his arms to include an eagle as a nod to the arms of his knight, and wanted a chief with a set of three charges that would reference his hometown football team, the Steelers, and their stadium, formerly known as Three Rivers. The lozenge ployé, sometimes blazoned an “Arabic napkin,” comes directly from the team’s logo.
Continue reading “Name and Arms for Josef von Ulm”
