May Additions to Traceable Art

Since last month, I’ve added another ninety images to the Traceable Heraldic Art collection.

Thanks to Iago ab Adam for continuing to send attractive line art adapted from period sources, and to new contributor Zubeydah al-Badawiyyah for filling a gap in the collection of cross variations. Continue reading “May Additions to Traceable Art”

A [Revised] Grammar of Blazonry

Bruce Draconarius’s “A Grammar of Blazonry” remains the canonical reference for the structure of blazons in the SCA, despite being more than thirty years old.

However, Bruce did make a few minor adjustments to the document recently, and unfortunately those changes have not yet propagated back to the version on the heraldry.sca.org website.

So I was very pleased when Bruce gave me permission to post the updated version here for ease of use in classes; it’s now available here:

A Grammar of Blazonry
(Or, Master Bruce’s Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Blazon)

Identifying Charge Groups

The concept of “charge groups” was developed within Society heraldry to facilitate analysis of armorial designs; although that phrase isn’t used in either period or modern heraldry, it is an effective way of understanding the actual designs that appear in period armory.

The rules for charge group analysis are set forth in Appendix I of SENA. and are covered in the “Armory 102” video class at East Kingdom Herald University.

To start, find a group of one or more charges of a similar size and in a related arrangement, then consider their placement and relationship to other charges to categorize them as follows:

Continue reading “Identifying Charge Groups”