ANSTHRLD - New device

Timothy A. McDaniel tmcd at jump.net
Mon Apr 9 09:33:07 PDT 2001


"doug bell" <magnus77840 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Per saltire sable and argent, three mullets of six points and in
> >base three mullets of six points one and two and in fess two
> >griffins segreant addorsed all counterchanged.
> 
> I don't give advice on styles since an appropriate style varies with
> country and time period.

Even if you don't want to deal with variation, there are some things
that were not seen in any place or time, and some things (like the
early Anglo-Norman style) that would not look out of place anywhere --
you might see "Gules, a lion rampant Or" anywhere from Naples to
Stockholm.

> The blazon appears to be correct

I'm afraid not.  "X and in base Y" implies that X is in the center of
the shield.  (Unless the tinctures prohibit it, but since they're all
counterchanged, that's not a factor.)  We usually don't do "in chief
... and in base", because "in pale" usually works better -- but not in
this case, where you have groups of groups happening.  "Addorsed"
usually implies "per fess" (there's only one way things can be
'back-to-back', "ad" + "dorsalis"), but I think you have to say
something to tell the positioning of the gryphons so as to not imply
that they're in base too.  Usually, punctuation is not needed in
blazons (though there's a convention or two), but a careful comma
before "and in fess" does help to indicate the two separate groups
(the mullets in pale, and the gryphons in fess).

I think that

    Per saltire sable and argent, in chief three mullets of six points
    and in base three more one and two, and in fess two griffins
    segreant addorsed, all counterchanged.

is the least bad blazon.  It's awkward, but it's not the blazon's
fault.

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)
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Heralds mailing list