If you speak Latin (yes, I do) you'll note that the left side of the shield as you look at it is referred to by the Latin word for right, dexter, and vice versa. This is because they're actually referred to from the viewpoint of the person carrying it.
OK, now we've got that out of the way, we can move on to actually dividing a shield up, since a shield of a single, plain tincture is both boring and rare. There are any number of ways of doing so, but these are probably the most common:
Per fess |
Per pale |
Quarterly |
Per bend |
Per chevron |
Per bend sinister |
That first shield in the group above would be blazoned as per fess, or and gules. The order of colours is always from dexter to sinister, and chief to base (top left to bottom right). So the next one would be per pale, or and gules. One can also say party per bend, or and gules, or party per pale, etc etc., although that's the more formal version and somewhat less common.
The Royal Arms of the United Kingdom |
Just as an aside, if you were to have a shield of a single tincture, it would in fact be blazoned with just the name of the tincture. For example, the arms of Brittany, which are blazoned simply ermine.
And there we go. Next time, I'll cover actually putting things on the shield. Which is also going to introduce us to the most important rule of heraldry.
Nice series - keep it up!
ReplyDeleteThis will be an interesting series as there is more to heraldry than meets the eye. It might be worth mentioning that 'tincture' implies a 'colour', a 'metal' or a 'fur'. Examples: 'Ermine' is a fur, 'or' is a metal, and 'gules' is a colour.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Ion
Erm, see the previous post? :)
ReplyDeleteOops... thought I had - maybe I missed one.
DeleteI did miss one - more than one, actually - disappeared of my dashboard page before I got to see it.
DeleteHi Mike, great series so far. Looking forward to reading the rest of it as you take it forward :)
ReplyDelete