Almost Heraldry in Jamestown, Virginia

For my last entry on the heraldry at the original settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, I’ve got a photograph of something that I’ve seen way too often here in the United States.  This one is one of four on a large monument at the site.

That’s right – it’s an empty shield, a very common architectural and decorative motif. In my review of heraldry in downtown Dallas, Texas, near where I live, I found that empty, blank shields and oval shields were far more common than shields and ovals with heraldic designs on them.

I’m not sure why this is so. In some ways I can understand it; having someone carve a coat of arms onto a shield shape will cost more than simply designing a blank one. But still, I have to wonder – what’s the purpose of having a blank shield? I swear, it’s all I can do some days, to resist the temptation to grab a few cans of spray paint in the usual heraldic tinctures, load them and a ladder onto my van, drive downtown late some evening, and fill some of those blank shields with real heraldry. (The fact that I’d be arrested for doing so is one of the factors that keeps me at home blogging instead of following through on that temptation.)

But still, when there’s so much heraldry available, and that could be appropriately used, for such architectural decoration, why use a blank shield?