The wreath is the means of fastening the crest to the helmet. The crest is placed above the helmet. When an artist depicts a shield with the crest above it on the wreath but the latter not attached to the helmet, he is guilty of an heraldic no-no. The crest cannot be airborne as though independent of the rest of the coat of arms. The wreath was of silk with a cord twisted round it and the crest was fastened upon it. The modern practice is to show the wreath in the alternate colors of the shield, usually the primary metal and primary color. The crest itself is perhaps the most well known of all the parts of a coat...
The shield is the central and essential component of the Coat of Arms. Without the shield there cannot be a coat of arms. The shape of the shield may vary just as the design of the arms as a whole may vary and in fact does. It would be possible to have half a dozen examples of the same coat of arms yet to the uninitiated it would appear that they are different coats. The reason for this is that the artists in creating the arms from the original written description have been influenced as all artists are by varying fashions and styles in Heraldry. The shield can be represented in many ways and directions according to the fashion of...
The rules of Heraldry prohibit placing a color on a color, a metal upon a metal or, a fur upon a fur. There is one well known exception to the rule about metals and this is on the well known arms for the kingdom of Jerusalem, where the gold cross and crosses are placed on a silver field. On the basis of these three materials, Color, Metal and fur all coats of arms are created. The items placed on the field are called charges. The original shields were very simple with few charges as there were very few knights and nobleman that had arms. However as Coats of Arms became more widespread the need to differentiate arms led to the...
It was only natural that if French should be the lingua franca of the worldly gentleman, just as Latin was of the churchman and the scholar, Heraldry would also speak that language. There was a movement in England around 1400 to substitute English words for old French terms in Heraldry, Silver instead of Argent, Gold instead of Or and so on, but this movement died out and the French terms are used to this day. This is not surprising, Norman French was used in the English Law Courts for pleading until 1735, so it’s use to the present day in Heraldry is understandable.Now to the terms used in Heraldry. A shield, which is the main and essential part of the...
Old French is the language of heraldry and many of the phrases used in the descriptions of the coats of arms are of Anglo-French derivation, the primary reason for this is that the French language was the first of the native tongues of Europe to arrive at anything resembling an equality with Latin. Since the time of the Roman Empire, Latin was the language of officialdom and had gradually become the everyday speech of people in Britain, France, Spain, and other western European countries.When the Roman Empire crashed, the rule of Rome was overthrown in many countries and Latin was replaced with the local dialect. In some countries such as France and Spain Latin lived on, albeit in a changed...
