A recent (March 17, 2010) post on the blog Paren(t)hesis entitled “Family History” (
http://rothlbaby.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/family-history/) talks about someone spending some time tracking down his family roots, and coming across a coat of arms.
As he notes, “as part of my investigation, I found my family’s official coat of arms. I remember going through a heraldry-geek phase in middle school, and I must not have grown out of it, because I think that this is unbelievably cool.” (Here's the coat that he found for his family.)
Well, he’s not alone. There’s a lot of us out here who also think that heraldry – whether for our own family or someone else’s – “is unbelievably cool.”
David,
ReplyDeleteI'm the author of the post you linked to. Thanks for taking notice and validating my interest! I have a follow-up question that seems to be up your alley.
I'm just an average guy. I'd like to find some ways to incorporate this coat of arms into my life. Do you have any suggestions? My sister thought we should make custom bookplates. What else?
thanks,
Mark
Hi, Mark!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're happy with my posting about your heraldic interest.
Oh, my goodness, the list of potential things to do with your coat of arms is almost endless. In addition to armorial bookplates (which a lot of armigers use, often from more than one artist), let me see if I can list some of the more common ones: a framed painting of your coat of arms to decorate your house; on a personal website on-line; a stained glass image of the arms set into a door or window; as a computer desktop image; on business or calling cards; a carved stone or wood rendering of the arms to decorate the house or yard; on stationery; as an embroidered patch on a blazer (or, a bit less dressy, on a gimme cap); some folks have had a banner made of their arms that they fly on a flagpole when they’re at home; engraved onto a pocket watch cover; placed on a set of china; on an armorial family tree; on a seal and/or signet ring; done up as a metal or enameled lapel pin. I have no doubt that I’m forgetting a bunch of other potential uses (and I’m leaving a few out deliberately; for example, I don’t really recommend following colonial and Victorian practice by painting your arms on the door panels of the modern carriage, whether VW Beetle or, more popular down here in Texas, the family pickup truck. It just doesn’t seem quite “right,” somehow).
A little bit of searching on the internet (and in reviewing some of the discussion threads in such forums as those of the American Heraldry Society or the Heraldry Society of Scotland) will turn up any number of sources who are capable and willing to recreate your coat of arms in just about any media you can think of.
David