[ANSTHRLD] width of orle OK?

tmcd at panix.com tmcd at panix.com
Mon May 1 10:27:00 PDT 2006


On Mon, 1 May 2006, Hedwig von Luneborg <lochherald at gmail.com> wrote:
> The first picture in this album...bear and orle is the one in
> question.  Is the orle wide enough or is it too think and looking
> more like a tressure?
<http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/melissa_phobia/detail?.dir=/f5d9&.dnm=412cscd.jpg&.src=ph&.tok=phRCOzEBOHeFjQms>

At first I mentally corrected "think" to "thick", before I realized
that it had to mean "thin".

Yeah, way too thin.  The gap between the outside edge of the orle and
the edge of the shield should be roughly similar to the width of the
orle itself -- which it is in this case, so it's also way too close to
the edge of the shield.

The image at <http://www.sca.org/heraldry/primer/ordinaries.html> is
closer, but I'd call even that one a little too thin.  A better image
... Google Images ... aw, crap, "Orle" is a town in Europe ...
Find Parker at something like
<http://www.heraldsnet.org/saitou/parker/> and look up "orle".  That's
a good orle.

Another general principle is "fill the space available", or "Big,
Bold, and Butch".  That doesn't mean "fill it until everything is
touching", but *in general* don't leave large amounts of empty space.
If the orle had been right, that bear's head should have grown
substantially.  <http://www.ed-wappen.de/buch-en.html> has a really
nice bull's head caboshed filling its space.  Actually, there's a lot
of good heraldic depictions (if not good heraldic design) there:
<http://www.ed-wappen.de/fraun-en.html> has nice space filling too,
though I'd shrink the primary charges just a hair.
<http://www.inlandregion.org/heraldry/kingdoms/antir-badge.html> is
good too: filling the space while not crowding the bordure.  Yeah,
unfortunately, like most heraldic art it's an "eyeball it" thing
rather than "set your calipers on 'caboshed'" thing.

Dannet Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com



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