The Armour Archive

Except that roses conflict with bloody everything.

Saritor wrote:I can toy with it some more.

Believe me, if your lady sews, she'll come to hate me for the lures. They're a pain in the arse to sew.

Got anything else you like besides generally winged thingies? Any sort of period for your persona?

Ooh. Maybe fire-balls instead of lures...

I swear, I'm really not a herald. Honest.

Ok, the reason I want the boar and the wings (and I know it is kinda dumb...)

You know the old saying "when pigs fly"?

I figure that is about when I will win a tournament.

To me, putting the pig and the wings on my device is saying "I have everything I need, I just need to put it all together".

That is why I'm hesitant about 2 pairs of wings- the pig only needs one set to fly, the other set seems redundant. That was also why I thought the heart would be a good fit, another element needed for success on the field.

As far as persona, on the rapier field and most other times I am a 1560's lowland scott.

I've just started doing heavy, and my persona there will- at least for a while- be "whatever I can find to fit"

I'll goof around some more tomorrow.

Dauyd wrote:As far as persona, on the rapier field and most other times I am a 1560's lowland scott.

I've just started doing heavy, and my persona there will- at least for a while- be "whatever I can find to fit" :lol:

Lowland Scottish heraldry had particularly simple charge arrangements. There's actually an Academy of Saint Gabriel report which looked for wings in pre-1600 Scottish heraldry, with no success:

http://www.s-gabriel.org/2511

Wings are much more common in German heraldry, and there are a number of online German rolls of arms; check out http://s-gabriel.org/heraldry/german.shtml .

If you want to stick with a Scottish style of arrangement, but using the same charges, I would recommend either making the boar's head gold, or putting a pair of wings on a chief (so you would have a white or yellow field, the boar's head, then a fat stripe across the top of the shield in red or blue & the wings on that.)

--Ursula Georges.

A boar ermine is probably too busy -- but would be a furry boar. And with four wings, your piggy would have twice the lift!

[/silly time]

Alex, think of heraldic erased as "deracinated," ripped out by the roots.

Konstantin the Red wrote:A boar ermine is probably too busy -- but would be a furry boar. And with four wings, your piggy would have twice the lift!

[/silly time]

Alex, think of heraldic erased as "deracinated," ripped out by the roots.

Don't make me redo that image with a boar potenty vert and argent on some horrid field choice to see if I can make your eyes bleed...

In looking through some rolls, I ran across this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... r241ps.jpg

Would it be possible to do something similar- like this?

I could have sworn I replied to this yesterday, but I guess my brain hiccuped and I hit preview instead of submit. Oh well.

I was going to suggest that if you are dead set on having the boar, consider having the whole body represented and not just the head. It will be easier having a winged boar than a head with wings somewhere on the device. My other suggestion is to consider (strongly) the possibility of making the boar in some other color than "proper." Proper is not seen very often in heraldry, and almost never with animals (there are of course exceptions). Keep in mind, heralds are very picky and have been called evil by more than one person. Your submission may take up to 9 months to get reviewed and if it is denied the wait starts all over again. Being a herald myself I try to tell everyone to come up with something simple, clean and relative to your persona, or country, or whatever. Makes it much easier to approve.

My $.02

I also have some links I can give you on heraldry in the SCA that may offer guidance and may give you ideas you don't know exist.

Dauyd wrote:In looking through some rolls, I ran across this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... r241ps.jpg

Would it be possible to do something similar- like this?

Dauyd, this proposed design is very pretty, but it will have a fatal problem in SCA registration. Charged cantons (a canton is the charge that looks like a corner, in this case yellow) were often used as augmentations in period-- where the king grants you the right to add something fancy to your heraldry as a reward-- so you can't register them unless you have been granted an augmentation of arms by the Crown.

Ursula Georges.

Now, you could do something that would be two boar's heads on a chief (a rectangle all the way across the shield) and the wings beneath.

Not only do you get your personal joke, but you improve it by having two boars and, thus, better suggesting when pigS fly.

ursulageorges wrote:Dauyd, this proposed design is very pretty, but it will have a fatal problem in SCA registration. Charged cantons (a canton is the charge that looks like a corner, in this case yellow) were often used as augmentations in period-- where the king grants you the right to add something fancy to your heraldry as a reward-- so you can't register them unless you have been granted an augmentation of arms by the Crown.

Ursula Georges.

I'm trying to find this in the SCA heraldry website and for the life of me I'm coming up with nothing. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you are allowed to have a quarter division (not quarterly) on your device. I think that cantons are typically smaller than 1/4th of the shield. I found this example on the SCA Armorial site:

# Aaron of Wolf's Krag
* The following device associated with this name was registered in January of 1980 (via the West):
Or, a wolf statant, head raised, upon a sinister base quarter sable, in canton a torteau.

This has me intrigued. Can anyone clarify?

Basically, the wolf is standing on a "ledge" . The sinister base quarter is ... well, the bottom left (viewer's right) bit of the shield. The wolf is standing on that. Think of the traditional silhouette of a wolf on a cliff, howling at the moon. That's the visual.


Effingham

Standing on it you say? Is that the minute difference between "upon a base quarter...." and "on a base quarter..."?

"Upon" being something along the lines of standing on (in the case of an animal) and "on" being placed directly on top. Is that the way it works?

How about along these lines, then?

Maghnus Ó Sionnaigh wrote:

ursulageorges wrote:Dauyd, this proposed design is very pretty, but it will have a fatal problem in SCA registration. Charged cantons (a canton is the charge that looks like a corner, in this case yellow) were often used as augmentations in period-- where the king grants you the right to add something fancy to your heraldry as a reward-- so you can't register them unless you have been granted an augmentation of arms by the Crown.

Ursula Georges.

I'm trying to find this in the SCA heraldry website and for the life of me I'm coming up with nothing.

Maghnus, the rule against charged cantons for people without augmentations of arms may be found in the list of reserved charges in the Glossary of Terms:

http://heraldry.sca.org/coagloss.html#reserved

You're right that cantons are usually drawn as smaller than 1/4 of the shield, but that is an artistic guideline which doesn't affect the basic reservation. Charges in medieval heraldic art tended to grow or shrink depending on the space available; in particular charged ordinaries were often a bit bigger than their uncharged cousins.

Ursula Georges.

Aren't all cantons in the chief dexter position? Is there a loophole that would allow a quarter in the chief sinister and base dexter/sinister?

Maghnus Ó Sionnaigh wrote:Aren't all cantons in the chief dexter position? Is there a loophole that would allow a quarter in the chief sinister and base dexter/sinister?

Nope, no "loophole." It's just whatever works best with the extant design. Cantons can go on either side.


Effingham

Saritor's definitely got something with those last three.

He can even use a different line-flection for his chief if he needs another Clear Visual Difference to escape conflict. This comes at the price of making the device a bit less simple... I think I'd recommend a chief __(metal)__ raguly, embattled or indented. But other lines may be more what blows Saritor's kilt up.

Forgot to ask: Saritor, are you accessing the SCA Online Ordinary & Armorial? You and your friendly, helpful local Herald Pursuivant can check for conflict with anyone else's device. Submittors can now handle a lot of their own basic research for themselves.

Nh. Haven't gotten around to looking at the O&A yet. I usually try and throw samples out there until I get in the general vicinity to what someone likes, and then start with the O&A check.

I'm actually deputy to the baronial herald -- so I get to do book & name heraldry, without all the fussiness of worrying about baronial courts.

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days. Demo'ing this weekend.

I've spent some time looking at devices to figure out what I really like. I have noticed that nearly all of the ones that really make me sit up and go "cool!' have some of the same elements- 2 of them being some sort of relatively simple (in my eyes, anyways- maybe not heraldrically) background, and the other being a relatively large charge placed right in the center- often being countercharged in color.

Saritor's is a good example.

With that in mind, I've kinda started over. I spent some time trying to draw what I'm looking for, but my paint skills just aren't up to the task.

I'm thinking quarterly sable and or, a bordure counterchanged, Winged boar rampant counterchanged (if that makes any sense)

Here is my aborted attempt to draw it- it's pretty rough, and unfinished, but It should give an idea where I'm trying to go:

Hey Dauyd, was this about what you had in mind?





[img]http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d32/PhoenixFirewall/SCA%20Device/DauydDevice.jpg[/img]




Quarterly sable and Or, a winged boar countercharged within a bordure countercharged.

I know that base dexter (bottom left as you look at it) looks more yellow and black, but thats mostly because of the image I used and I had not the mind to fix it up entirely at the moment. I'd consider making the boar a solid color of a different tincture.... anything but white, blue or purple so it stands out a little better. To me it gets somewhat washed out by all the countercharging.

Yes! That is exactly what I was looking for. Looks great!

Actually though, the blazon (verbal description) of that design would be:

Quarterly sable and Or, a winged boar within a bordure counterchanged.

The way blazonry works, the "counterchanged" (not countercharged) applies to both the boar and the bordure, so no need to repeat it.




(When pigs fly, eh?)

Ah, thank you Donal for that clarification. And we both missed something on it.

Quarterly sable and Or, a winged boar RAMPANT within a bordure counterchanged.

Still learning, but then again, who isn't. Good luck Dauyd. If you need any changes or whatever, you know where to find me. Check with you're local herald to find out if you can even submit a color image (printer color that is). I think some kingdoms are still only allowing the use of crayola markers. If you can use a printer-colored image, let me know and I'll switch out the form to the proper kingdom and email you a higher resolution quality.

Cheers!

I did a little tweaking, I think I'm at about the limits of my abilities here.

Replaced the nearly invisible outline in the black sections, darkened the lower left quarter, outlined the wing to more closely resemble the rest of the image, and extended the base of the wing onto the back of the boar a little.

The only quibble I have- and it is really minor- is that the wing seems a little too uniformly black. It is better with the outline, but it looks "different" than the rest of the image.

I can definitely live with it as-is, though:

Chello!

Not to quibble...well, actually to quibble, shouldn't the boar's position be:

segreant: like rampant, but applied to winged quadrupeds such as griffins

???

I am not now (actually just became) nor have I ever been (unless you count a stint in the early 90's) a pursuivant in the College of Heralds.

I like the final design. :thumbsup:

Chello again!

And it might actually be free of conflict.....at least a preliminary search doesn't find anything. I'll run it by a few other herald's.

The only prob I can foresee is with the winged boar itself...the College can be bi-polar on such charges! But they have been registered before: a total of 15 by my count, the last in 02-06.

Good luck!

Tony

The search program I downloaded gives me 26 hits when I search for "boar" and "wing"- one of which is a winged head, and 20 others with a winged pig of some sort (it also looks for variations on the word, such as "pig" or "swine"). Most recent being 10-06.

As far as "segreant" vs "rampant", all the information I can find gives me the impression that "segreant" is only used to describe griffins. I would be curious as to the correct term, though.

BTW, if I haven't done so already, I want to thank everybody for the help.

With your help, I've gone from "It ain't much, but I gotta cover my shield with something" To a device that I will be proud to display. I could have never come up with it on my own.

Snappy.

Consider also parting the shield (and the charges), instead of quarterly, only per pale or per fess -- halving the shield vertically or horizontally. This simplifies the counterchanging and makes that winged pig easier to identify as a winged pig. He wouldn't be so broken up.

As a variant that wouldn't make any diff one way or another for conflict problems but will serve to pretty up the device, give his eyes and tushes (even his tongue) a color to show them off. By themselves they are much too small to count for differencing in SCA's manner of heraldry, but they add an artistic touch, and are blazonable too.

Dauyd wrote:As far as "segreant" vs "rampant", all the information I can find gives me the impression that "segreant" is only used to describe griffins. I would be curious as to the correct term, though.

Segreant is used to describe the "rampant" position of animals with four legs and wings.

Effingham

Chello again!

What Eff said...when checking for conflicts, one of the blazons with a winged boar did use segreant.

Tony

Dauyd wrote:I did a little tweaking, I think I'm at about the limits of my abilities here.

Replaced the nearly invisible outline in the black sections, darkened the lower left quarter, outlined the wing to more closely resemble the rest of the image, and extended the base of the wing onto the back of the boar a little.

The only quibble I have- and it is really minor- is that the wing seems a little too uniformly black. It is better with the outline, but it looks "different" than the rest of the image.

I can definitely live with it as-is, though:

The reason for that non-conformity with that design is that all of the images I found of winged boars were just entirely too small to be used in photoshop. I don't do any work at less than 300ppi, and the whole form is 2550x3300 pixles, so I spliced two images together that had different drawing styles.

You basically did what I would have done next to the image, cleaning it up and making it a more uniform color between the quarters. If that is how you want it, I can give you the high-res, refined version via email. I just need to know what kingdom you are in so I can place it on the right form. Also keep in mind, that your kingdom might not accept a color print out of your device. Seems that some places still want them done in Crayola marker. /shrug

Yes, that would be greatly appreciated.

I'm in Northshield, and their submissions page just say 3 color copies and one black and white. It doesn't mention any specific thing being necessary to get the colors.

http://www.northshield.org/Posts/Herald ... sions.aspx

My email is jen_dan (at) charter.net

Thanks again!

You could also use my avatar service.


Effingham

Eff's avatars are beyond compare (he does them in different sizes too, so it's not just an avatar. He can do big splashes for web sites or you can print it out or get T-shirts/coffee mugs from Cafe press). He really has a knack for bringing a blazon to life.

-Cian of Storvik