Heraldic Inspiration

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you know I’m a nerd and/or a geek.  You will also know that I’ve recently (re)joined the SCA and am busy getting my hands on history.  I have recently acquired a heraldry teacher, complete with homework!  Yes, I am in fact happy I’ve been given homework. 

Heraldry is study and system behind coats of arms and devices, all those nifty designs you see on shields and logos.  In the SCA, it also applies to names, and being a human microphone.  Remember Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale?  He was a herald.  Remember all those shields that showed who won?  Those are coats of arms.

The last assignment I was given was to go through a 16th century English roll of arms, a book of a bunch of devices.  I would link to it, but the link doesn't seem to be working right now.  There was probably about a hundred pages to go through.  But it was a lot of fun.  A lot of the designs were something that I could see people today coming up with.  There were also a lot of things I would never have thought of.  There was a chicken leg taking up the whole shield.  Seriously.  Okay, it was probably an eagle or some worthy predator, but it looked like a chicken leg to me.

Not only do these old designs inspire me to think up new designs for heraldry, but it sparked my creative juices in general.  I am actually working on that long list of projects that I need to get done.  Several of them were actually finished this weekend! 

History isn’t always dry pictures in books.