SC - Salamanders and badges

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

Kael wrote:
  Now as much as I like to jump the gun and get things started as of
  yesterday, as a herald I suggest that this gets thought out carefully
  before we submit.  Things to think about are: 1) do we really want a badge
  submitted? 2) do we want cheesy salamanders or might something else be
  more appropriate?  3) Under whose name would it be submitted? 4) since
  this discussion is bound to take up a lot of messages, do we really want
  this discussion to go in the group, or should we relegate it to a few
  people who will bring the results back to the group?

I cannot resist placing my heralds tabard on... perhaps I should put it on
my head like a hat.....

As I frequently state when I teach introductory heraldry to the not-yet-a-
herald, the closest thing that most modern people know about, to heraldry,
is advertising.

They are, however, not the same thing.  Advertising, and its logos and
slogans, attempt to make an irrevokable link in the viewers mind between the
logo and the company.  While there are exceptions (Coca-Cola's wave comes to
mind), most of the time we think of things like Shell, etcetera.

In the real middle ages (the stuff we ought to imitate), badges were just
symbols with no real relationship to the subject.  (Until you get to the
late end of period, and what many heralds consider the beginning of decadent
and debased times for heraldry.)

In the SCA, many people treat heraldry as "business cards" or "resumes".
You hear things like "I'm a scribe and a brewer, so I want a barrel of
feathers."  (This is something like what Sir Gunthar, in good and earnest
hopes, suggested.)  I think we can do better: make only the most general
allusion to cookery, educate, and give the beholder an education.

I've been thinking about this, for a little while, and I have a serious
suggestion.

At some times and places in period, salt cellars became wild and elaborate
items, fancy and decorated statues.  These were called nefs.  They
frequently had wheels on them so they could be rolled from one end of a
table to another, and they were richly decorated.

I'd suggest, for our use "(fieldless) a nef in the shape of a wheeled ship,
or".  This would match a surviving period nef, isn't "obvious", but is
absolutely period and cookery related.  And it avoids all the cliched
symbolism of cookpots, spoons, forks, plates, and so forth.

Last bit of personal opinion: don't do the "salamander fondue", at least not
seriously.  Silly jokes (Saponacious notwithstanding) rarely have staying
power.  By the time the College of Arms renders a decision sometime next
year, that joke will be too stale to tell.

Oh, and last administrivia.  Gunthar is our Patron, I'd encourage him to
register it.  If not he, I could do it in the East, or any one of us would
volunteer.  I'll let him steer.

	Tibor
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