Post Archive – Page 26 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

A Badge for the Outer Burroughs of Østgarðr?

At a recent provincial commons meeting, some people were joking about a proposed badge for the three “outer boroughs” of New York City which are part of Østgarðr but not within the boundaries of any canton: the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

I don’t think there’s any actual intent to register this, but I figured I’d draw it up for amusement value. I’m not sure if folks have thought through the tinctures they might use, so I just guessed at what seemed natural.

Argent, a pall azure between three otters in annulo proper.

The three otters and the segments they inhabit represent the three “outer” boroughs, while the blue represents the “rivers” (actually tidal estuaries) that divide them.

Unsurprisingly, this design is unregistrable due to conflict, and I don’t have the time to search for clear variants — perhaps a pall wavy? — so this will have to do for now.

A Map of Østgarðr

I have no particular cartographic skills, but have been meaning to try my hand at a map of the Crown Province and its cantons.

Attached is a halting first step in that direction — not totally wretched, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps some day I’ll set aside the time to come back to this and try to further beautify it.

Now updated following discussion on Facebook.

Thanks to Bróccín MacIvyr for pointing out that I had left out the newly-formed Shire of Midland Vale — an omission which has now been corrected. And thanks to the numerous people who hashed out the status of the Bronx, which isn’t part of Northpass as had been indicated in the first version of this map.

The new version also has “swamp” markings in Settmour, which I think turned out nicely, but I’m not as happy with the modern “forest” indications in Northpass and Midland Vale — maybe someday I’ll get a chance to replace those with little tree markers like the ones from John Speed’s map of 1605.

Heraldic Registrations of the Canton of Whyt Whey

The canton’s registration of a new device and populace badge have been forwarded by Blue Tyger Herald from the East Kingdom to the Society’s College of Heralds, and I thought this would be a good moment to look back at the branch’s previous heraldic registrations.

(My thanks to Baroness Shauna of Carrick Point, Laurel Archivist, for retrieving these records from the depths of the Society’s storehouse.)

Canton of Whyt Whey

The canton took shape in the heart of the Crown Province of Østgarðr in the mid-to-late 1980s. (See the writeup on Cunan by Alexandre Lerot d’Avigné for a brief history.)

Riffing on the mis-reading of Østgarðr as “cheese farm” and the century-old nickname for the brightly-lit midtown portion of Broadway, the initial proposal was to name the canton “Grate Whyt Whey”, but the first word was dropped during the registration process as being too ahistorical.

More (and Less!) Traceable Art

There have been a bunch of incremental improvements to the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art in the last few weeks:

I’ve continued to add images to the collection, so it’s now over 700 pages of traceable illustrations.
I’ve been sourcing more charges from historical rolls of arms, like this key from the Derring roll (c. 1270) and the Schnecke from Siebmacher’s Wappenbuch (1605).
There’s a new abridged version available for download that leaves out some of the mirror-image alternatives and artistic variations, producing a PDF with 10% fewer pages for folks who want to have less to haul to events in the field.
New “see also” links on some pages lead you to the matching entries in the PicDic and Pennsic Traceable Art libraries, so you can review alternative design options.
For the nerdiest folks who might be interested in how the site is built, there’s a new Build Scripts page which explains how a 2,000-line Perl program converts the book’s PDF files into a series of web pages.

I’m still working on a process to streamline artists’ contributions of images, but if you’re interested please feel free to reach out and introduce yourself and we’ll get the ball rolling.

More Traceable Art

I’ve made a number of changes to the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art recently:

I’ve finished incorporating the last of the 74 images I received from the Pennsic Bored-Artist Collection.
I’ve added a couple dozen more images from historical sources, including Bossewell’s book of 1572 and Guillim’s from 1611.
Many more of the items have downloadable PNG and SVG clip art files.
The online index does a better job of cross-referencing items under multiple terms; for example “Stalk of Wheat” is indexed under both “Stalk” and “Wheat.”

Two Articles by Lothar von Katzenellenbogen

I am reposting two armory articles by Lothar von Katzenellenbogen (mka Thomas Barnes) which I think are interesting and useful: Authentic Heraldry Made Simple and A Critique and Ranking of Charges Found in the “Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry As Used in SCA”.

They were written in the 1990s and archived at the Academy of Saint Gabriel, but were only available in a plain-text format that wasn’t very readable — the versions I’ve posted have had modern web styling applied to them and will hopefully be easier to scan.

These are over two decades old, and somewhat out of date, and they’re very opinionated, but they also contain some useful information, and I feel there’s value in them if they’re considered in context rather than taken as an authoritative reference.

Traceable Art Update

As I mentioned recently an effort is underway, led by Lady Þórý Veðardóttir, to update and expand upon the Pennsic Traceable Art collection in order to facilitate emblazoning of armory submissions at Pennsic and other SCA events.

I’ve been working on a draft document that combines field divisions and ordinaries were from a collection of heraldic elements I had been assembling, along with a number of charges picked up from other sources, including the original Pennsic Traceable Art book, illustrations by the volunteers of the Pennsic Heralds’ Point Art Tent, and several publicly-available sources, including the Viking Answer Lady‘s collection of SVG elements.

A Traceable Resource for Armory Illustration

While I’m happy to do most of my armory design on a computer, there are times when you need to be able to put together a device or badge submission entirely offline, most notably at Pennsic and other large multi-day events.

Some folks have both an encyclopedic knowledge of heraldic art and the freehand illustration skills necessary to produce quality designs unassisted, but many people with less experience or weaker drawing abilities — and those who, like me, have both of those challenges — depend on references like the PicDic and the Pennsic Traceable Art collection.

Device and Populace Badge for the Canton of Whyt Whey

Argent, an apple gules slipped and leaved proper within a laurel wreath vert, and an orle sable.

Earlier this year, I worked with other members of the Canton of Whyt Whey, our local SCA branch here in Manhattan, to design a new set of branch arms. We went through innumerable drafts and proposals before settling on a device which gained unanimous consent.

As with many medieval devices, these are “canting arms”, featuring the city’s namesake big apple, along with the required laurel wreath and an elegant black stripe.

Argent, an apple gules slipped and leaved proper within an orle sable.

We’ve also submitted a design for a populace badge, which features the same design elements without the branch-marker laurel wreath.

Both designs have been submitted and will hopefully be approved and registered next summer.

(The branch’s previous device will be retained as our “ancient and honorable arms,” and perhaps be deployed as a battle standard to strike fear into the hearts of our foes.)

Device and Name for Zoya the Orphan

Purpure, three Arabian lamps argent.

I worked with a local member of Østgarðr to refine their device design and document their preferred name for submission to the College of Heralds.

“Zoya” is a female baptismal name found in Paul Goldschmidt’s “Dictionary of Period Russian Names” as “Zoia”, attested to 1356 in “Levin, Eve. Calendar of Saints—12th-15th Century Novgorod” p. 20. In the original Cyrillic, this name would have been spelled Зоя (three letters, Ze-O-Ya), the last letter of which may be transliterated as Ia, Ja, or Ya. (Confirmed in personal communication with Paul Goldschmidt, who reports “Zoia, Zoja, or Zoya are all the exact same name.”)

The construction “given-name descriptive-byname” is found as a period construction for Russian names in the same “Dictionary of Period Russian Names,” which states “there are numerous cases of simply adding a common adjective onto a given name,” and gives “the Unkissed”, “the Unpredictable”, and “the Long-Nosed” as examples.

“The Orphan” is a descriptive byname rendered in English under the Lingua Anglica Allowance.