ANSTHRLD - Craftmarks

Patrick J. Cuccurello pat at adtelusa.com
Wed Nov 4 05:26:46 PST 1998


At 08:37 PM 11/3/98 -0600, you wrote:

>I really don't know much of anything about "maker's marks" -- were
>they like hausmarken, stylized geometrical patterns?
>

Pretty close, at least Cher's is (see below)

>What is the blazon / description of her design?  If
>
>    Cherie Ruadh MhicRath of Locksley|8205A|s|(Tinctureless) A cat's
>    eyes, nose and whiskers.
>
>it's tinctureless armory, which was allowed for registration for the
>general public for a while.  Some are in the on-line O&A as "|s|",
>meaning "seal", and some as "|b|", meaning "badge".  (The LoAR isn't
>on-line, so I can't see any details Laurel might have mentioned.)
>Such armory could be used to identify an artisan or merchant, but so
>could badges or even arms.
>

That is her maker's mark.  Think of three dots in an inverted triangular
pattern
with three lines radiating from the bottom dot to each of the sides
horizontally.

The nice thing is that since it is merely a geometric pattern, you can hide it
into the design of just about anything you make, from scrolls to castings.
I would
imagine that you could use it as the diapering pattern on all scrolls you
illuminated
and no one would be the wiser.  In essence, that is the beauty of maker's
marks.
Unless you know what you are looking for, you probably wouldn't find it.
Kind of
part of the entire Guild/Secret Knowledge type of thing.

>Was it codification of the rules that caused it, or the realization
>that tinctureless armory was blowing huge holes in registration space?
>

I believe the reasoning was that a badge could do the same thing without
having
to add another sub-category to worry about in the armorial.  In actuallity,
it was 
a pretty cool idea since technically maker's marks would not necessarily
follow
heraldic practice.  They were just marks used by the artisan to identify
their 
work.  In practice, I can just see the headaches in trying to coordinate
that sort
of thing within the College.  It's tough enough just dealing with heraldic
rules.

I also believe that the College was not too excited about having to
regulate the
marks used by every bleeding artisan in the known world.  Go figure  :)

Petruccio

>\     /
> \   /
>  \ /
>   X    , Daniel de Lincolia his mark
>  / \
> /   \
>/     \
>
>--
>Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com;
>if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work address.
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> 

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