[MR] RE: Greetings, thanks, and notice: a heraldic question

[David W. James]

On May 11, 2005, at 3:51 PM, Charlotte Johnson wrote:
> Quick question...

> I'm no expert in heraldry, but I believe that the SCA encompasses time 
> periods
> and locales for which our standard heraldic practices are not period. 
> Are there
> any provisions for folks whose persona would not support having 
> heraldry?

> Just curious...not that I'm going to fight in Crown, or anything. ;-)

> Cheers,
> Mathilde

	There are at least two common ways of looking at this problem.

	One is to consider yourself to be someone from a non-heraldic culture 
who as relocated into a culture where heraldry is expected of people.  
In that case, you assume arms appropriate for the culture.

	The other it to design arms that are stylistically compatible with the 
art and or (if known) shield decoration of your persona's culture.

	In the first case, things are easy, you devise arms in keeping with 
Atlantian (or where-ever) practice.

	In the second case it can take a little more work.  I have taught a 
class on Pre-heraldic Shield Decoration a few times, though I do not 
recall if I have taught it in Atlantia.  What I do is present the idea 
of heraldry, and then do a quick survey of motifs I have observed in 
various cultures that I have seen in the SCA, and give some rough ideas 
on how these could be rendered as blazon-able arms that could be 
registered in the SCA.  In almost all cases, it is not only possible, 
it is not even particularly difficult, once you have identified common 
traits of the cultures shield decoration.

Kwellend-Njal