[ANSTHRLD] Anton de LaTour: tower, grapevine, bordure

[Tim McDaniel]

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Joe McGrew <oscagne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Subject: [ANSTHRLD] Consult help
> 
> I'd like to ask help on a consultation.

That's one of the major purposes of the list, so by all means do so!

In future questions, please put a specific name or description into
the subject line, like
     Subject: Anton de LaTour name
     Subject: Anton de LaTour: tower, grapevine, bordure
or whatever.  That helps people who want to refer to a particular
threadlet, instead of trying to distinguish generic subjects like
"Consult help" versus "Help, please" versus ...

> The client is requesting the name Anton de Latour.  He is also
> requesting the following description for a device:
> "The field is argent. It has a sable bordure with an argent  fleur de
> lis pattern.  in the center there is a tower azure (the tower has an
> open door, and three shaded verticle rectangular windows) on top of
> the tower there is a sable lion passant guardant. Under the tower
> there is a grapevine in its natural colorings that extends to both
> sides of the tower that don’t quite reach the lion."
>
> He provided the following sketch:
> http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3478/3991430558_08d27e67a5_o.jpg

Um, I seem to be missing something, because I cannot see a grapevine
in there anywhere.

> I have attempted to blazon it, but would like some confirmation:
> Argent, on a tower azure charged with a grapevine proper a lion
> passant guardant sable all within a bordure sable semee-de-lis
> argent.

"On" = "charged with".  The CoA Glossary of Terms at
<http://heraldry.sca.org/heraldry/coagloss.html#appendix> notes that
"above" and "upon" are ambiguous, but suggests "atop" as being
appropriate.

The doors and windows on the tower are artistic details that are not
blazoned.  If I can't see a grapevine, I can't blazon it, so

Argent, atop a tower azure a lion passant guardant sable, all within a
bordure sable semy-de-lis argent.

Tinctures: argent + azure + sable
Charges: tower + lion + bordure + fleur-de-lys
Rule-of-thumb complexity: 7.  As noted in another reply to your note,
if there were a grapevine proper, it would add vert + brown at least,
blowing past the rule-of-thumb limit and probably causing a return.
(I think actual grapes would be present only if you specified
"fructed", but I don't have a Pict Dict handy to check.)

Danel Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com