[MR] heraldic cotehardie

[Karen]

Ceara asked:

> I was thinking of doing a heraldic cotehardie. Is there any specific
> order that the heraldry should go? ... If the front of a cote is a quartered
> field, what goes where? Or does it matter?

As far as I can tell, it doesn't really matter.

http://www.sca.org.au/st_florians/university/library/articles-howtos/heraldry/HeraldicFrocksS.htm has several examples from period illustrations; a visit to http://effigiesandbrasses.com will provide some additional views of many of the same memorial brasses referenced in the article.  You can see a few more heraldic surcoats at http://larsdatter.com/surcoats.htm also.

I'd recommend sketching it out, and figuring out where the various figures will go; this way, you'll be able to determine whether you'd prefer to have the quartering divide up vertically at your waist, or elsewhere.  (And it will also mean that you can avoid having things be in awkward or embarrassing parts of the cotehardie, in terms of what parts of your body will be embellished by which heraldic bits -- as well as considering how each element will need to be shrunk or elongated to fit onto your body in that part of the garment.)

> For instance, if you're doing a pennon, Spike should precede
> (closest to the pole) the baronial badge, which precedes the
> canton badge, etc. 

I think you mean a standard (the really long banners, though it's more a matter of the kingdom's ensign closer to the pole, and then whatever badge[s] and/or motto[s] are appropriate on the rest of the banner, rather than a requirement that every territory be represented; Atlantians sometimes use the populace badge [Spike] instead of the ensign [which looks like http://aeg.atlantia.sca.org/projects/poppies/atlantia-ensign.jpg]).

A "pennon" is a much smaller flag, usually either kinda triangular or swallow-tailed at the end opposite the pole, often with barely room enough for one badge; I think the original idea behind a pennon is a small flag for one's lance. :-)


But as such placement relates to heraldic cotehardies ... there's no rules (medieval or SCA) that indicate that you have to represent every aspect of your territorial affiliations on such a garment. :-)  Some women's heraldic garments have one's father's heraldry on one side, and one's husband's heraldry on the other -- this is what we see on http://www.silkewerk.com/images/luttrell3.jpg in the Luttrell Psalter for example -- the two women are Geoffrey's wife Agnes de Sutton, and his daughter-in-law Beatrice le Scrope -- both have the Luttrell heraldry on the right side of their surcoats.  But not all women's heraldic garments have two sets of heraldry; many just have one.

But if you're looking to just make the garment say "I'm part of thus-and-such-a-household" or "I'm from the barony of X" or "I'm an Atlantian," look at using the group's badge (or populace badge) and check out http://larsdatter.com/livery.htm for some ideas.  (This is a great group project for households and/or territorial groups, either for garb or for fighting tabards/surcoats; examples of both of those are available on the aforementioned livery linkspage.  I haven't seen any photos of the cooks at the recent Tournament of the Lily, but they were all dressed in livery with the feast-cook's own badge, and I happen to know that they looked nifty.) ;-)


Karen Larsdatter
www.larsdatter.com