The Armour Archive

I am getting ready to submit my name and device but my local herald is a bit "busy". So is there a Meridian herald here anywhere that can give me some advice? Mostly what I need for the name is help writing up the documentation. And the device I need a little more help with.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I imagine we could help with Device design.

What's the blazon, and what features are you wanting help with?

Here's all the documentation you should need for Bjorn:
http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bi ... cgi?2129+0

I will post pics when I get home tonight of the possible devices. I will need help blazoning (?) them and info on whether they suck or not. And I should have mentioned it earlier but the name I am going for is not Bjorn. It is David von Pretz. I can document David from the SCA herald site. The von, I am told, is a very German thing but I still need to document it. And the Pretz is a town in present day Germany (not sure if it was a historic town also). But either way it is also my last name so the rules say I can use it even if I can't document it. But I don't know how to write it all up.

"Blazon" is the verbal, shorthand description of the "Emblazon" which is the picture.

We'll be able to get you quite good at researching the SCA O & A (Ordinary & Armorial) for possible conflicts, which is the usual reason for somebody's submission being rejected. Conflict checks used to be a lot slower and harder when only the College of Heralds had the research materials. Now it's simple and swift -- an impatient cranky Geico cave man could do it.

Just how snowed under IS your local Herald Pursuivant, anyway?? If it's a really bad case of bad life, I'll shut up, but it sounds at the least like the guy could use a deputy to take some of the workload.

As for drawing style, main thing is to try and fill up the available field with your charges. Ordinaries and Subordinaries really don't have to do that, but it helps if a charge is drawn rather larger than you might expect to: clarity and even detail get better if you do. Be bold; heraldic art's style is the very super-graphic. You're, like, designing your own personal trademark, which is also your own personal banner.

Sometimes black ermine spots surrounding a black charge might blur the shape of the charge -- not a good thing. Some people like a change in the color of the ermine spots as a fix for that, and the result can often be very snappy.

I really won't want to bash the local officers so I would prefer to keep it at she is busy so as not to say that she is lazy.

Here is my first attempt. I am not sure what to do with it or even if there are conflicts that I would need to change. I have looked online and I can't figure out how to use the online armorial to check for conflicts.

<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=Device.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/Device.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Based on a quick run-through of the O&A, "Paly gules and azure, a dog rampant or" should be fairly clear.

I don't think there's a paly gules and azure at all, and I didn't see any dogs (or seadogs or sea-dogs) rampant or (other than a sea dog rampant to sinister or, and there's a difference for change of position there, not to mention everything else). There might be some wolves rampant or that might be similar enough, but I didn't start looking through those...

Just to clarify - heraldry recognizes two types of dogs - the bulky, flop-eared one on this design is classed heraldically as a talbot. Did you do your blazon search on that term?

The other type is the greyhound, which is the sleek, long-limbed animal we're used to seeing "courant" on the side of large coaches . . .

EDIT: I did a search on a "talbot rampant Or" and found only one, on a very different field; and a total of nine instances of a "talbot rampant." It's a little surprising that there are so few, but it looks like your chances are good.

I have looked around and I found a kind of search engine and have come up with about the same results. Also I just had an idea that i would like to try out but I can't get my photoshop working right now.

I am still fiddling with the colors a little to make them more pleasing to my eye but it will probably end up looking very close to what was shown above. Does anyone have any advice on how I should write up the documentation on the name?

And BTW so I don't forget to say it I really do appreciate the help from everyone.

I'm sorry to say that your device has a conflict with:

# Elric Strangulf

* The following badge associated with this name was registered in March of 2007 (via An Tir):
(Fieldless) A wolf salient Or.

There is one difference for fieldlessness, but no difference for rampant vs. salient or dog vs. wolf.

You're also in conflict with Ana Moonstar (Elric has permission to conflict from her):

# Ana Moonstar

* Either the name or the following device associated it (or both) were registered in August of 1979:
Azure, a wolf rampant reguardant Or, maintaining in its teeth a mullet of eight points argent, standing upon a moon in her plentitude per pale argent and sable.
The moon is a maintained charge

When I was goofing around on Photoshop I came up with this one. I don't even know if it is possible and I am not that interested in it I was just wondering if it is possible and if so how would you Blazon it.
<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=BluewhitealternatingTalbot.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/BluewhitealternatingTalbot.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

And there is this one. I think it is "Paly argent and azure, a Talbot rampant proper". Did I say it right and who can find a problem with it. Also if I do something proper then do I need to do the teeth white and the tongue red or is the entire thing one color?
<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=Blueandwhitepropertalbot.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/Blueandwhitepropertalbot.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

And there is this one. "Gyronny argent and azure, a bomb proper". I believe that the term bomb and grenade can be interchanged and they mean the same thing.

<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=Gyronywithgrenadeproper.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/Gyronywithgrenadeproper.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Bjorn Leorhals wrote:When I was goofing around on Photoshop I came up with this one. I don't even know if it is possible and I am not that interested in it I was just wondering if it is possible and if so how would you Blazon it.
<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=BluewhitealternatingTalbot.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/BluewhitealternatingTalbot.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Argent three pallets azure, a talbot rampant counterchanged.

It's not paly because it does not have an equal number of blue and white stripes.

Bjorn also wrote:And there is this one. I think it is "Paly argent and azure, a Talbot rampant proper". Did I say it right and who can find a problem with it. Also if I do something proper then do I need to do the teeth white and the tongue red or is the entire thing one color?
<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=Blueandwhitepropertalbot.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/Blueandwhitepropertalbot.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Again, it isn't paly, it's argent three pallets azure. Otherwise correct, and no; you don't have to do the details. They are optional.

Bjorn Leorhals wrote:And there is this one. "Gyronny argent and azure, a bomb proper". I believe that the term bomb and grenade can be interchanged and they mean the same thing.

Call it a grenade; that's the conventional term.

Searching the O&A for conflicts is by the main charge, the biggest and most centrally located. Even the honorable ordinaries can be main charges. In your cases, these are your talbot or your grenade. You'll want to have some idea of blazon to make it work for you. You type in "talbot rampant" and that should bring up anything in the database that is like that. Or even finer: "talbot rampant proper," or "talbot rampant Or."

A device would conflict if it had the same position and color of main charge and the same field, or background color.

With living creatures, there are a lot of options of position/posture, and they are all pretty readily distinguishable. I should think a difference between "rampant" and "salient" should suffice as a good clear one. Perhaps a secondary charge is needed.

Counterchanging like that on a complex main charge like a talbot rampant is rather dubious practice because it gets hard to see just what is being counterchanged when it's that thoroughly broken up. This trick works better on an ordinary, like a fess or a bend. See the quarters of the State Flag of Maryland for an example of what that would look like. Now counterchanging the talbot on a field divided per pale, split in half vertically into the two colors, works better because the counterchange is less complex and it's easier to see the complex shape of the rampant talbot and the viewer is more sure more quickly.

Coloring teeth, eyes and tongue aren't counted as clear visual differences, for they're too small, but they make a nice enhancement of a critter, proper or not so. The colorings don't have to follow the rule of tincture, either, but they still work graphically: check out "lion gules, orbed armed and langued azure" and the opposite coloration "lion azure, orbed armed and langued gules." Zippy looking aren't they, by comparison with lions just plain azure or gules?

I'm having a lot of trouble buying that your idea conflicts with Ana Moonstar, as her field is not parted, her main charge has a difference of posture (its head is turned back fully), and her device includes two additional charges. You can prevent conflict by adding secondary charges of some other kind (or shape) than what Ana has. Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I don't know what a "maintained charge" is in this context. Or more simply, you can spin your talbot around and have him "rampant to sinister," and that very likely would end any conflict.

Not being that familiar with all talbots -- I don't think you can slap brown on it and call it proper. "Proper" implies its natural color (e.g., a "tree proper" is green leaves and brown trunk and branches), but there is no ONE color for a talbot/dog. Dogs can be brown, gray, white, black, beige, dappled.... get the problem?

(BTW, if I saw a blazon of a an animal proper at that size, I'd sure expect the teeth and tongue to show their natural colors. If it was standard heraldic practise to trick out teeth and claws of lions and so forth, I'd expect the practise to extend to "properizing" the animal.)


Effingham

Konstantin the Red wrote:Searching the O&A for conflicts is by the main charge, the biggest and most centrally located. Even the honorable ordinaries can be main charges. In your cases, these are your talbot or your grenade. You'll want to have some idea of blazon to make it work for you. You type in "talbot rampant" and that should bring up anything in the database that is like that. Or even finer: "talbot rampant proper," or "talbot rampant Or."

Searching the O&A for specific words is dangerous: talbots conflict with dogs, wolves, brachets, etc., etc., and just searching for "talbot" won't bring up any of these conflicts. You're usually safer going to the Ordinary and looking at the category (in this case, "Beast - Dog").

http://oanda.sca.org/ordinary/index.html

With living creatures, there are a lot of options of position/posture, and they are all pretty readily distinguishable. I should think a difference between "rampant" and "salient" should suffice as a good clear one. Perhaps a secondary charge is needed.

There is no difference between Rampant and Salient. Conveniently, rampant & salient dogs are in different categories in the Ordinary.

I'm having a lot of trouble buying that your idea conflicts with Ana Moonstar, as her field is not parted, her main charge has a difference of posture (its head is turned back fully), and her device includes two additional charges. You can prevent conflict by adding secondary charges of some other kind (or shape) than what Ana has. Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I don't know what a "maintained charge" is in this context. Or more simply, you can spin your talbot around and have him "rampant to sinister," and that very likely would end any conflict.

"Maintained" in SCA blazon means that the charge is too small to contribute difference.

Ursula Georges.

How about this one? It has some of the details that Effingham suggested, and yet it is still very simple (which is what I am really going for. Not sure but it may be

Per bend azure and argent, a brown talbot proper (yeah, I don't know how to finish this).

<a href="http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/?action=view&current=Outlinecopy.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/ZackPretz/Outlinecopy.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Also can I register just a field w/o any charges on it?

I just did a quick conflict check on Per bend azure and argent, a brown talbot rampant proper, and didn't find any conflicts. I will run this by the antir-heralds list to see if I missed anything.

About your name: the mundane name allowance only works if you are using part of your exact legal name, so you could use it to register Pretz, but not von Pretz. If you want to use von Pretz, you will need to show that the town of Pretz existed prior to 1600. (I did a quick Google search and couldn't find anything about the history of the town-- it's pretty tiny-- but if you know a little German you might be able to find more.)

To write up David as a German given name, I would say something like:

The spelling David is found in 1356, 1425, and 1586 in Talan Gwynek, "Medieval German Given Names from Silesia" at http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/bahlow_v.htm .

(What you need is spelling, date, article name, author, and URL. Since it's on sca.org/heraldry you don't need photocopies.)

If you do decide to use Pretz as your legal name you should send copies of your driver's license or other proof that it IS your legal name with your documentation.

It may not have the same origin and you may need to find a better source:

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPreetz&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

A translation of:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preetz

1185, the city of Poretz first Ecbrecht Procensis in the Versus de Vice Lino mentioned. Der Name der Stadt entwickelte sich ab 1216 aus dem Wendischen von po rece ( am Fluss ) über Poretzie (1221) und Pretze (1442) zu dem heutigen Preetz . The name of the city evolved from 1216 from the Wendischen of po rece (on the river) on Poretzie (1221) and Pretze (1442) to today's Preetz.

So, Ursula, a tangential question: if the moon in her plenitude is big enough for the talbot to be standing upon as blazoned, how is it so small as to be a "maintained charge," as the eight-pointed mullet is? It's outside of the talbot and big enough to show a moon face, and if anything, it's holding up, maintaining, the talbot.

ursulageorges wrote:I just did a quick conflict check on Per bend azure and argent, a brown talbot rampant proper, and didn't find any conflicts. I will run this by the antir-heralds list to see if I missed anything.

Nobody on antir-heralds could find a conflict. In fact, there aren't any brown rampant dogs/ wolves/ thylacines (yes, somebody did register a thylacine in 1970-something)/etc. registered in the SCA, so you have a bit of room to play with backgrounds if you like.

One person did warn about possible contrast problems: azure and argent is technically neutral, but it can be hard to see dark brown on blue. You might want to keep that in mind as you're coloring your submissions forms (and please do COLOR your forms with Crayola markers! Printer ink can fade to an unrecognizable hue in the time it takes a submission to go through).

ursulageorges wrote:

ursulageorges wrote:I just did a quick conflict check on Per bend azure and argent, a brown talbot rampant proper, and didn't find any conflicts. I will run this by the antir-heralds list to see if I missed anything.

Nobody on antir-heralds could find a conflict. In fact, there aren't any brown rampant dogs/ wolves/ thylacines (yes, somebody did register a thylacine in 1970-something)/etc. registered in the SCA, so you have a bit of room to play with backgrounds if you like.

One person did warn about possible contrast problems: azure and argent is technically neutral, but it can be hard to see dark brown on blue. You might want to keep that in mind as you're coloring your submissions forms (and please do COLOR your forms with Crayola markers! Printer ink can fade to an unrecognizable hue in the time it takes a submission to go through).

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it. One more question.

If I put the colors in for the teeth tongue and eye I know I need to mention it in the blazon but how? Would it end up being

"Per bend, azure and argent, a brown talbot rampant proper with teeth argent and tounged gules, and a argent eye" or is there a heraldic way to say eye, toung, and teeth?

For SCA purposes, you really don't have to AFAIK -- because they don't count as sufficient differencing and are therefore superfluous. But if you want to paint your critter that way, great; it jazzes up your person on the field. However, that's not to say it would hurt anything if you did specify your talbot is orbed, armed, and langued of whatever tinctures; respectively the eyes, teeth, and tongue. I think the claws also come under armed, if I do not misapprehend. This is how I would blazon it; you're not far off really:

Per bend argent and azure, a talbot rampant proper, orbed and armed argent, langued gules

We strongly avoid using brown, particularly dark brown, in SCA heraldry. Too easy to mistake it in a hurry across a field of hurtling bodies for black, and what's brown the color of and was that really something you'd want on your personal banner and coat of arms? So brown only shows up in use for things colored proper and to give a tone-on-tone for diapering for really fancy schmancy shield painting. Paint him doggy-tannish-brown or some hound-animal color -- a somewhat lighter decorator color rather than the basic heraldic crayon box, and he'd contrast better with the azure half of your field. So I think Laurel King of Arms would pare the "brown" out of the blazon; they do that kind of thing up there for the preservation of the heraldic idiom. You'd hardly believe some of the tough stuff they've had to do from time to time up there. A very experienced herald could quite bend your ear, at great length, over very important minutiae of what the College and Laurel have from time to time had to do or decide in their decades-long history. And get you to understand both the technicalities and their earthshaking importance.

I got into heraldry studies out of a liking for symbol-crunching and graphic design, and I boast a grandfathered-in sort of Device, the presently-forbidden "pentaskelion" of chevrons (okay, it's a gammadion with five arms, but "gammadion" is another forbidden one [Greek for swastika, and that's a charge used a little bit in heraldry from times BEFORE the Great Mid-Twentieth Century General Unpleasantness, but given a bad name since). It's not allowed for any more submissions on the grounds that there's absolutely no known medieval/renaissance-era precedent for it. Not only out of period but out in space, I suppose. At least, it's barred until somebody comes up with good, period proof. But they'll let me use it because I submitted it and was approved according to the rules then in force in the late 1970s. I seem fascinated with designs that rotate and radiate; if I couldn't pass my pentaskelion I might have resorted to something gyronny.

Studying heraldry eventually got me doing researching and conflict checking for the College of Heralds, eventually allowing me to work with and learn from such as Daoud, then Kingdom Herald for Atlantia, and Frederick of Holland over in West.

There's also coded and pizzled. I've often been tempted to have my lion "coded azure" (not too fond of the thought of a blue tallywacker, but blue BALLS is something we can relate to. ).


Effingham

True; though I think we should insist on a pair of D's in "codded." No "code azure" for us, we're not in medicine nor usually in emergency services.

A bear (Ursus arctos) rampant argent pizzled azure? Well, I could see it... <-- w/goggles against the glare off the ice

Konstantin the Red wrote:True; though I think we should insist on a pair of D's in "codded."

That's a little low (and wrong sex) for "double-Ds"


Effingham

<~~had always understood the term to be "cudgeoned," but is now unable to find any mention of that term in heraldic references.

Konstantin the Red wrote:So, Ursula, a tangential question: if the moon in her plenitude is big enough for the talbot to be standing upon as blazoned, how is it so small as to be a "maintained charge," as the eight-pointed mullet is? It's outside of the talbot and big enough to show a moon face, and if anything, it's holding up, maintaining, the talbot.

I haven't personally seen the registered emblazon of Ana's device-- I just know about it because Elric was my client-- but my guess is that only one foot of her rampant wolf is standing on the moon, so that the wolf is effectively holding the moon in a hind paw and the mullet in its front paw.