[ANSTHRLD] devices

[Tim McDaniel]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Leslie Rose <aggileslie at hotmail.com> wrote:
> The first one he wants the chief to be checky white and green.  (big
> mess up on the typing) with the rest of the device being white and
> the horseshoe being a regular U shape.

Thank you for adding detail.  You should include previously-mentioned
details too so that all the info is in one place, such as the tincture
of the horseshoe here or the ram's head below.

(If you would also please remove quoted text from your replies unless
you use that text to establish context, I would greatly appreciate it.
It's unnecessary extra text to download over the phone and unnecessary
extra space on disk.)

So this is
    Argent, a horseshoe inverted Or and a chief checky argent and
    vert.

The reason I know that a horseshoe has its opening downward by default
(inverted U) is because I have the Pict Dict, _A Pictorial Dictionary
of Heraldry as used in the SCA_.  "Inverted" means that it's
upside-down with respect to normal.

The checky chief shares a tincture with the field.  Because the edge
has white blocks blending into the white field, it'll be hard for the
eye to realize what it's seeing -- it'll first look like some sort of
embattling on the edge.  I recall seeing precedents that that's
registerable.  I would advise someone against it, though, just on
visual and aesthetic grounds.

It has a gold charge on a silver field.  That's "metal-on-metal".
That is indeed cause for return under RfS VIII.2.b, for not having
good contrast.  (RfS VIII.2.b is the rule I quoted in my previous
e-mail.)

> As for the other one.  It was a red field with black saltires.  The
> rams head would be large and overlap the saltires.

A saltire is a X shape stretching to the corners of the shield.  You
can have only one.  If you have more than one, they have to be cut off
at their ends, and then they're "saltorels".  For a blazon, you would
have to say how many saltorels you have and where they are on the
shield.

If there's only one, it's
    Gules, a saltire sable, overall a ram's head cabossed argent.

(The ram's head is facing the viewer with no neck visible, right?)

It has a black charge on a red field.  That's "color-on-color".  That
is indeed cause for return under RfS VIII.2.b, for not having good
contrast.

Daniel de Lincolia
--
Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com; work is tmcd at us.ibm.com.