ANSTHRLD - Conflict Checktmcd

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

I should also ask: Cahira, is it that you want a geometric design
without complex-outline things, or do you want the blazon to have no
charges?  For example,

+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+

has no charges -- it's "Barry sable and Or", or whatever.  Many
heralds would say that the following, with just the last stripe
chopped off,

+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+
|              |
+--------------+

is "Sable, two bars Or", and that the bars are charges.  (I think
they're being over-precise, but that's how it tends to be viewed: even
number of stripes is a field; odd number of stripes are bars on a
solid field.)


Cahira <cahira_of_bonwicke at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Feel free to comment on period usage [of tinctures]. I might not use
> the advice, but I would enjoy hearing it. :-)

The most helpful approach a submitter can have!  It occurred to me
after writing it that, unlike most other submitters, you really have
only two design features possible:
- the lines of division
- the tinctures
and here I was talking about turfing ALL your ideas!  I'd quote
Jar-Jar Binks, but you'd have to commit a murder-suicide.

In period, if you had three tinctures touching, almost always one of
them was gules.  That's because, while red is considered a color (and
thus deemed to have good contrast with argent and Or), a bright red
has almost as good contrast with all the other colors.  Think
red-and-blue, red-and-black, red-and-purple -- all quite visible.

Purpure was quite rare in period, down in the low single-digit
percentages (2%-4% of all coats comes to mind).  In Iberia, it tended
to be used more than that, but I think even there it only got up to
8%.  Further, sable and purpure have the hardest-to-see contrast of
any pair of colors, with the possible exception of azure and purpure.

If you had no preferences at all, I'd suggest Or, sable, and gules
... but given that you do have a preference, I'd suggest working with
them and seeing if something good can come of it.

You might want to make the purpure on the light side -- not as far as
lavender, I would say, but not a deep rich purple that you can only
tell from sable by close comparison.

> > - Do you like large blocks of color, like in "per pall inverted",
> >   "quarterly", "per pale", and the like, or are stripes OK?
> >   Stripes were pretty common in period.
>
> I prefer large blocks of color, but I won't rule out stripes.

A couple of points occurred to me after I sent.
- Stripes tend to make people think of the US flag.  It wasn't
  uncommon in period to have a geometric pattern and a canton, and
  that would REALLY make people think of the US flag.  At least it's
  not black-and-blue: that would make the knowlegable think of the
  leather pride flag ...

  Even large blocks can have problems with looking too much like
  real-world designs.  Consider "Per pale sable and per fess Or and
  purpure, on the dexter side a mullet of five greater and five lesser
  points Or":

      +-------+--------+
      |       |        |
      |   |   |        |
      | --*-- |--------|
      |  / \  |        |
      |       |        |
      +-------+--------+

  Better yet, DON'T consider it, whether you live in Texas or
  Oklahoma.

- With purpure and sable having low contrast, they really ought to be
  separated and/or in large solid blocks, simply so you can tell them
  apart.

> I like complex lines. As long as it's something that I can draw by
> myself (or with the help of rulers, french curves, stencils,
> et. al.), I'm ok with it. :-)

Ooooh.  There's lots of possibilities there.  If you're not familiar
with them, you can go to

    <http://www04.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/ta2/saitou/ie401/Jpsynop.htm>

and look for "LINES OF DIVERSITY APPLIED CHIEFLY TO ORDINARIES".  He
generally isn't as "big, bold, and butch" as we want for those, and he
has some post-period terms and distinctions.  For example, in period
"indented" and "dancetty" had the same size, and you just used
dancetty in certain cases and indented in the rest.

I think the most common ones in period were plain, indented,
engrailed, and nebuly, about in that order of decreasing frequency.

A good field division ... hmmm ... let me think about it?  Also see my
question at the top.

One thing done a lot in period and not much in the SCA is "vairy".
    <http://www04.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/ta2/saitou/ie401/Jpglossv.htm#Vair>

"Vair" alone is blue and white, but it wasn't at all uncommon to use
any single color and any single metal, as in "vairy sable and Or".
Ferrers there is the older form of vair (vair ancient), with rounded
curves (like "sine waves"); Beauchamp is the straight-lined newer
version (vair modern, which just means more recent but still period).
We give no difference between them; it's a matter of artist's choice.

You can do things with stencils, patterns, and paper-doll-style fabric
cutting, I would expect.  However, vairy is more complex than most
people care to deal with.  If it's too tiresome to make a banner,
paint your arms, or whatever, there's not a lot of point in
registering a device, after all.

> > suddenly thinking about the possibilities of Mortimer
>
> Dare I ask??

    <http://www.geocities.co.jp/Hollywood/5004/m241a.gif>

A not uncommon design -- the family was moderately prolific.  Pretty
easy to grasp by looking at it: it's a smaller shield with rays coming
out of it in certain patterns (except the field is just horizontal),
or alternately just a radiating bordure.  Damned near impossible to
blazon completely accurately: at least one period heraldic treatise
says it's the test of a good herald and suggests just blazoning it
"Mortimer".  I can barely think about how to conflict-check it.

However, it was basically just a mischevious comment, because Mortimer
doesn't fit your constraints.  The usual blazon says that there's an
inescutcheon (the white shield), a chief (the horizontal area above
the chief), two gyrons (here, the two blue corner triangles), and
arguably three pallets (the blue vertical pieces above the
inescutcheon).  It's still visually striking, though.

Daniel de Lincolia
--
Tim McDaniel is tmcd at jump.net; if that fail,
    tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work account.
"To join the Clueless Club, send a followup to this message quoting everything
up to and including this sig!" -- Jukka.Korpela at hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
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