Although I generally ignore the heraldic practices of modern aristocratic families, I was struck by the below achievement, which was designed by the Garter King of Arms in 1969 upon the investiture of Charles Windsor as the Prince of Wales, as it does a nice job of incorporating both the subject’s primary arms as well as their badges and other arms to which they were entitled.
February is here again, and the #HeraldicLove campaign is once again encouraging reenactors to display their arms (or a badge of allegiance) on a heart-shaped field.
I participated in this campaign last year, drawing three dozen heart-shaped badges and devices for branches and individuals. Along the way I also created digital templates for a heart-shaped field and a set of corresponding heart-shaped field divisions and ordinaries.
As we begin another round of heart-shaped heraldic display, I thought it would be fun to display a pair of hearts conjoined by an arrow, as I’ve done below with the arms of myself and my wife. Continue reading “A Pair of Hearts Pierced”
During the five years in which I’ve been thinking about medieval armory, I’ve registered four different designs with the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and as I’ve started thinking about further registrations it seemed prudent to pause and take stock of my current inventory. Continue reading “Armorial Catalog for Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin”
As described in Wikipedia, an “album amicorum” was a sixteenth-century “book of friendship” with blank pages on which people collected signatures and messages from people they knew, much as modern students might sign each others yearbooks or fans might collect autographs of famous stars.
Many of these include armorial illustrations, some quite elaborate, giving us a glimpse of another way in which heraldic symbols were used during the Renaissance.
The Album Amicorum of Jean le Clercq, a Belgian university student, dates from the tail end of the sixteenth century, combining pages printed in 1564 containing engraved scenes and stanzas of Ovid translated into French, with other pages hand-painted two decades later showing displays of armory. Continue reading “Armorial Displays from the Album Amicorum of Jean le Clercq”
The National Library of Ireland’s “Irish Nobility E1” manuscript was produced by and for the office of the Ulster King of Arms, the principal heraldic authority for all of Ireland under English rule, and records the armorial achievements of various barons and viscounts of Ireland.
The first section of the book seems to date from around 1585 or so, and contains a number of armorial achievements featuring a heraldic tabard as the central element rather than a shield.
This form of display is unusual enough that I thought it was worth posting these for easy reference. Reenactors seeking a less-martial form of armorial display might consider using these as inspiration. Continue reading “Achievements with Heraldic Tabards from “Irish Nobility E1””
The best part of this little booklet from the Heraldry Society in England is that it provides dates for when various types of armorial practices were introduced, along with citations to the reference works they drew those dates from.
An achievement is an integrated display of a person’s armory and honors, including in various combinations, a device, helm, coronet, crest, supporters, motto, order badges, and other elements that differed between individuals and in various times and places.
I don’t have much experience with illustrating armorial achievements, and it’s not something for which we have much established tradition here in the East Kingdom of the SCA, but I’m interested in exploring this area further. Continue reading “Armorial Achievement for Alaxandair Mórda”
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”
Many SCA branches register badges for use by their members, in order to allow people to indicate their association with the group without using the branch’s primary arms. I’ve gathered some guidelines and commentary about populace badges below for easy reference.
In the medieval period, according to Dame Zenobia Naphtali, “the Arms of a Kingdom properly were only used by the personal embodiments of the Kingdom, their King and Queen. Private individuals would not use the Kingdom Arms except in contexts making it absolutely clear that those Arms were used in reference to the King and Queen, not to themselves.”
Continue reading “Populace Badges”