November 2019 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Downloading The Gelre Armorial

The Gelre Armorial is a medieval manuscript including over 1700 coats of arms that was painted around 1395 near Geldern, presumably by Claes Heinenzoon, herald to the Duke of Guelders.

It is kept in the Royal Library of Belgium, or KBR, and until very recently it was not available in full online, although images of several pages or noteworthy arms had been posted, such as the earliest known color depiction of the flag of Denmark.

Very recently, KBR published high-resolution images of the complete book, but they were only available through an interactive point-and-click “zoom to view” web interface, and could not be downloaded in a simple PDF format. Continue reading “Downloading The Gelre Armorial”

New Fall Illustrations

This fall, I have started to separate the largest volume of the collection, with over six hundred illustrations of man-made objects, by moving all of the illustrations related to food and farming into a section of their own, and the same for all of the military-related charges. I intend to continue this process, perhaps splitting out all of the clothing and fabric-related items into a volume of their own.

I hope that this makes it easier for folks who want to page through items related to a particular theme, while still allowing easy lookups of individual charges.

There are a hundred new illustrations that have been added to the collection since this August’s Pennsic. My thanks to the artists who have contributed new charges, including Pennsic Art Tent illustrators Bahja al-Azraq, Kryss Kostarev, and Li Xia, among others. Continue reading “New Fall Illustrations”

The Role of a Branch Herald

[Crossposted from my session notes on the Elmet site.]

On November 13, I coordinated an online meetup and chat session for heralds of the East Kingdom focused on the responsibilities of a branch herald, and figured I would share a portion of my notes here for easy reference.

Ten heralds of the East attended, nearly all of whom were branch heralds or their deputies, from all areas of the kingdom and all levels of experience — one herald had held the same position for twenty years, while another learned learned during the call that he was being promoted from deputy to take his barony’s pursuivant position. Continue reading “The Role of a Branch Herald”

Name and Device for Engel der Pfau

Engel der Pfau is a skilled fencer with a flamboyant Landsknecht persona who recently became the rapier champion of our local group.

He decided it was time to register a device, and asked for “an angry, fighting, pissed off peacock, his tail plumes out” on a red and black field. Continue reading “Name and Device for Engel der Pfau”