[ANSTHRLD] Device advice

[Tim McDaniel]

On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Brian L. Rygg or Laura Barbee-Rygg
<rygbee at montana.com> wrote:
> [possibly]
> Azure, a Celtic cross argent and overall a bend sinister Or masoned
> sable.
>
> Haven't conflict-checked it.  The question I'd have is whether the
> bend sinister would cover up (too much of) the circle that seems to
> be a defining element of the Celtic cross.

I have three answers.

(1) The default SCA Celtic cross is a Latin cross -- which is to say,
the lowest limb is elongated, like

     |
   --+--
     |
     |

(At least that looks Latin in *my* font.)  That would put more of the
circle above the bend sinister.

(2) Even if it's equal-armed (which must be explicitly blazoned), you
can and should draw things to promote identifiability.  Since the
field in the possible proposal is empty except for the cross, it can
certainly be Big, Bold, and Butch, and the bend sinister can be
narrowed a bit, if that's even necessary.  Period overall bends could
be quite narrow, sometimes narrower than we'd permit for
registration.  I would try to be careful not to get too narrow, but I
think in this case I'd try shrinking.

(3) Most all overall charges in period had a bend or other ordinary on
top of a more complicated charge.  So

    (a)
    > Azure, a bend sinister Or masoned sable and overall a Celtic
    > cross argent.

    would be further from period style -- though since we have no
    evidence of Celtic crosses in any period armory, it's already not
    all that period no matter what you do,

    (b) the notion that identifiability is the be-all and end-all of
    period armorial style is perhaps a bit overstated in the case of
    overall charges.  That is, if there's an overall ordinary, I would
    argue for requiring less identifiability, on the grounds that
    period people seemed to care somewhat less.

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