ANST - Principality Arms Discussion

Tim McDaniel tmcd at crl.com
Sat Feb 21 14:21:37 PST 1998


On Fri, 20 Feb 1998 stddly at SHSU.edu wrote:
> How about: "Sable, a lion's head crowned erased and
> affronte', within a laurel wreath, and on a chief
> embattled Or, two mullets of 5 greater and five lesser
> points sable."

Herald fu to follow.

I suggest "a lion's face".  That's a lion's head "caboshed:
Applied to an animal's head when shown affronty but cut off
clean behind the ears so that no part of the neck is
visible.  The term is no applied to the heads of lions or
leopards; for those the word 'face' is used."
(Brooke-Little, _An Heraldic Alphabet)

Crowned: I'll write another message about that.

I notice that the crown and the head (and the wreath and the
chief) are all gold.  I'd prefer contrasting colors for a
head and a crown, for visibility.

Embattled: if you meant this to have Deep Significance,
that often degrades the style and composition of a design.
A plain line would likely be fine.

On a chief two mullets (stars): I need to go microwave some
crow.  In period, the usual practice was to put three
widgets on a chief to fill the space better.  There are
examples of one (sometimes long & skinny, like a lion
passant), two, four, or five.  In _Anglo-Norman Armory II_,
however, the most common case for mullets is two, not three.

Mullets of greater and lesser points: utterly unknown to
period armory.  Please don't.


Let me echo Conor's call: simplify.  Most period arms had at
most two objects with a complex outline, plus a geometric
thing or two (more often than we see it in the SCA, in
fact).  The mandatory laurel wreath and crown get us two
objects with complex outlines already.  Given the number of
crowned lions in period, adding a lion or a part thereof
doesn't get further from classic period style.  Due to SCA
conflict regs, we might have to add some other design
element to clear conflicts with all the non-SCA lions.
Please don't go too far.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com
is work address.  tmcd at tmcd.austin.tx.us is wrong tool.  Never use this.
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