Monday, March 1, 2010

Family Heraldry

I ran across an interesting new take on the idea of "family heraldry" the other day.  On the website of the Registro Internacional de Armas Gentilicias (http://www.riag.es/), among their recent registrations, was a set of three coats of arms to James William Baker (below, top left), Katrin Baker (below, top right), and Tracey Katrin Baker (below, lower center).  The various arms, shown below, have a recognizable theme to them that might lead you to think that they belonged to individuals who could related in some way, even if the relationship itself is not clearly shown.

But it's when you place all three arms side-by-side that you see the "overarching" (if you will pardon the pun) theme of the arms, and that you see that the three individuals must be very closely related indeed.

It's an audacious design, to say the least, to create three coats of arms that fit together to make a single comprehensive composition.  I haven't decided how much I like it personally, but it's certainly an intriguing concept.

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