Armory – Page 8 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Registration Basics Class Notes

At Whyt Whey’s recent Schola In The Solar event, I taught a heraldry class (my first!) covering the basics of registration for folks who were new to the society.

I put together a four-thousand-word writeup that outlined the process and covered some of the basic rules and jargon for both names and armory, which served both as an outline for my presentation and as a handout that people could take home with them for future reference.

I’ve posted it as a web page and as ten-page PDF file.

There’s definitely room for improvement, but I was pretty happy with how the session went, and look forward to teaching more classes in the future.

Name and Arms for Badr al-Abyārī

Badr is a rattan fighter in our province and had been working towards registering a name and device for some time. Along with with some of the other heralds on Facebook’s SCA Heraldry Chat group, I was glad to provide support as he worked through the process of selecting and combining name and armory elements.

Sable, the moon in her plenitude argent and on a chief Or a dragon passant gules.

Badr already had the outlines of his desired design worked out, and just needed a bit of support to find a combination of his favored elements that was registrable and clear of conflict.

The dragon image here comes from the Viking Answer Lady’s SVG Images for Heralds, while the moon image comes from Bruce Draconarius’ Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry.

Every Distinct Tincture, Fur, and Field Treatment

A discussion earlier this year led me to the calculation that there were 97 heraldically distinct tinctures, furs, and field treatments recognized in the SCA, and this evening I figured I’d go ahead and sketch them all out.

The math works out as follows:

7 solid tinctures (2 metals plus 5 colors) +
10 neutral furs (every combination of 2 metals x 5 colors) +
20 ermine furs (2 metals ermined of 5 colors each, plus 5 colors ermined of 2 metals each) +
20 masoned (2 metals masoned of 5 colors each, plus 5 colors masoned of 2 metals each) +
20 papellony (2 metals papellony of 5 colors each, plus 5 colors papellony of 2 metals each) +
20 scaly (2 metals scaly of 5 colors each, plus 5 colors scaly of 2 metals each).

Examples of Individually Attested Pattern Registrations

[Update, December 2020:] For the latest version of this document, see A Catalog of Individually Attested Pattern Submissions which includes additional items not listed below.

The SCA’s current rulebook for heraldic submissions, The Standards for Evaluation of Names and Armory (or SENA), establishes a common set of requirements called the “Core Style,” based on armorial practices that were common across late-medieval Europe and on Anglo-Norman conventions in particular.

However, it also provides an escape hatch — you can register designs which do not meet the core style rules if you can show that all of their elements were part of established heraldic practice in some particular time and place. This mechanism is known as an “Individually Attested Pattern” (or IAP), and allows for registration of designs which are typical of German, or Italian, or Japanese, or other heraldic cultures but which would not be registrable under the Anglo-Norman-influenced core style rules. Continue reading “Examples of Individually Attested Pattern Registrations”

Names and Arms for Sara and Giuseppe Sala di Paruta

Sara and Giuseppe live in our neighboring barony of Dragonship Haven. Her name and arms had been registered but she wanted to tweak them, while his were being registered for the first time.

Per pale sable and vert, a poodle salient contourny Or, collared and langued gules, and in sinister canton a bezant.

Sara already had similar arms registered, but with a talbot sejant, which she wanted to swap for a poodle salient.

Poodles are documented as period, being known from at least the fifteenth century. The poodle illustration is adapted from the submissions of Briana Heron of Caid, using the period shearing for water dogs without ornamental pompoms.

Name and Arms for Lady Angelica di Nova Lipa

Lady Angelica is an established member of the society, serving as the chatelaine of the Canton of Whyt Whey, but had never registered her name or arms, an oversight I was pleased to help correct.

Gules, eight fleurs de lys in annulo Or.

In our first round of consultation, Angelica identified red and gold as her preferred colors, and the Florentine fleur de lys as her desired primary charge, but pinning down the optimum arrangement required multiple iterations before this design emerged as the favorite.

Intellectual Property Rights In Branch Armory

An interesting point came up as part of the recent discussion of copyright and armorial registrations: what rights does the SCA as an institution have with regards to the images and designs used in devices and branches?

The question was triggered by an element of the Society’s rules found in section XII of the SCA’s “Corporate Policies” document, which is inexplicably difficult to locate online, but which can be found in a revision markup for changes made in 2013.

Copying Heraldic Art from OSCAR

I recently asked a group of heralds what the conventions were on copying heraldic art from OSCAR for re-use in other submissions, and thought it would be useful to write up some notes on the subject here for future reference.

Copying elements from previous submissions to use as clip art when creating new armory is not uncommon. While some heralds are great freehand illustrators, others are not (myself included), and being able to pull charges from an existing image and repurpose them allows those folks to assemble good-looking submissions for the registrants they are assisting.

Badge for Lady Beatrice della Rocca

Lady Beatrice selected her badge in consultation with Erich Gutermuth, the deputy herald for Whyt Whey, and I was pleased to be able to assist them with the registration process.

A roundel counter-vair.

This design raised an interesting corner case where two of the SCA’s heraldic rules intersect:

Firstly, longstanding precedent holds that you can’t register a fieldless badge consisting of a shape which is a standard form for heraldic display, such as an escutcheon, billet, or roundel. The reason for this rule is that allowing such registrations would create the possibility for confusion; for example, when viewing a black and white square, one might wonder “is this a delf per pale sable and argent, or is it simple per pale sable and argent displayed on a rectangular object?”

Name and Device for Alaxandair Mórda mac Matha

Alax is is my son, and wanted a name that reflected his mother’s Scottish ancestry, and a device suggestive of his primary interest in the society: youth combat.

Sable, an escutcheon within an orle Or.

Black and yellow are the colors of the martial offices, and after trying dozens of different designs he settled on these nested shield shapes.

Alaxandair is a Gaelic form of Alexander, first recorded as the name of a Scottish king born at the end of the 11th century (Alaxandair mac Mael Choluim), as well as two 13th century successors (Alaxandair mac Uilliam and Alaxandair mac Alaxandair), and then appearing more widely in records in the 13th and 14th centuries.