Four years ago I posted an adaptation of Yehuda ben Moshe’s “Charge Group Theory” flowchart, intended to guide people in classifying the elements in an armorial design.
The chart I posted was slightly simplified, but I worried that it still might be daunting for beginners, and the recent occasion of teaching a class on charge-group analysis provided a good excuse to revisit it.
Continue reading “Identifying Charge Groups Revisited”Six years ago I posted a fun little chart that highlights the relationship between the terms we use for ordinaries and the related divisions, arrangements, and orientations.
Recently I made a few minor updates to the chart, the most notable of which was to add a column for the corresponding multiple divisions, such as barry and bendy.
Continue reading “Ordinaries, Divisions, and Arrangements Revisited”Sometimes submitters know that they want a device that looks authentically like the period arms of a particular time and place, but aren’t sure where to start.
My general advice for this situation is to spend an hour flipping through a couple of armorials from that culture to get a feel for the range of arms typical in that environment.
Continue reading “Brainstorming Armorial Designs From Period Sources”SENA devotes over 10,000 words to conflict checking armory, which the below guide attempts to summarize in one-twentieth of the space.
Many details have been omitted, so references are included to the relevant sections of SENA to facilitate additional research as needed. Continue reading “A Revised Armory Conflict-Checking Checklist”
At the conclusion of an armorial design process, whether self-guided or in consultation with a herald, when you’ve found a device that appears to follow all of the rules and is free of conflicts, there can be an urge to rush it off to your kingdom’s submissions herald ASAP — after all, it’s perfect — and registration takes so long, you better get started now — and worst of all, what if someone else registers it first?
At this point, savvy practitioners will urge you to pause for a moment and catch your breath.
One of the first questions commonly asked by newcomers to the world of armory is “what colors can I use?”
This seemingly-simple question has multiple answers, depending on how deeply you want to dig in, and it does involve learning some basic heraldic jargon, but the it’s worth mastering these foundations. Continue reading “An Introduction to the Tinctures”
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”[Crossposted from my session notes on the Elmet site.]
On November 13, I coordinated an online meetup and chat session for heralds of the East Kingdom focused on the responsibilities of a branch herald, and figured I would share a portion of my notes here for easy reference.
Ten heralds of the East attended, nearly all of whom were branch heralds or their deputies, from all areas of the kingdom and all levels of experience — one herald had held the same position for twenty years, while another learned learned during the call that he was being promoted from deputy to take his barony’s pursuivant position. Continue reading “The Role of a Branch Herald”
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”
