Another Cool Set of Redrawn Arms

The folks over at wappenwiki have finished and uploaded another set of redrawn coats of arms, this time from the Historia Anglorum by Mathew Paris.

As an example, here is Richard de Cornwall, Earl of Cornwall:

You can click on each coat of arms to see a larger image, and then there's a link from that image's page to the even larger original .svg file.

You might want to click on over there and take a look to see!  The link is: http://wappenwiki.org/index.php/Historia_Anglorum

Something I Just Have to Share!

It's always fun to have an heraldic artist do a depiction of one's coat of arms.  Plus, I always enjoy bragging on my friends.

Our (and I have to say "our"; I'm pretty sure he likes Jo Ann a bit more than me.  Not jealous, just a fact) friend Sunil Saigal, with whom we always enjoy getting together at the various International Congresses of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, is a very good heraldic artist, though his job doesn't always give him the time he'd like to devote to it, or any of his other hobbies for that matter.

Still, among other things, for his own pleasure he keeps a liber amicorum, literally a "book of friends," in which he draws their coat of arms and has them sign that page.  Then, as time allows and the inspiration strikes, he draws another copy of their arms for them.

I was thrilled a couple of weeks ago (the same day we were leaving for several days to visit my mother in Las Vegas, as it happened), I received a large envelope from him with a copy of my arms inside.

As I said, he's a very good heraldic artist.

The weekend after we got back from visiting my mother, I went off to one of the hobby and craft stores and purchased a picture frame and some mat board of an appropriate color.  (Yes, I have a mat cutter, and I'm not afraid to use it!)  So now his wonderful illustration of my coat of arms is up on the wall in my home office, and looking quite nice there, too!  (I may end up rearranging some of the heraldic items on the bookshelves below it for a better visual balance, but all in good time.)  The following are not the best photographs, having been taken with my cell phone, but should give you a good idea of this new splash of heraldic color on my office wall.

Thank you, Sunil!

NFL Logos Reimagined As Heraldry

Am I the only one who thinks that all of this Game of Thrones stuff may have gotten out of hand? Yes?  Well, okay, I'll stop being annoyed by it.

Anyway, someone has reimagined all of the NFL team logos as Game of Thrones heraldry.  Here's a sampling of what he's done.

You can see all of the logos of the NFL teams reimagined as Game of Thrones sigils on-line at https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/if-nfl-teams-were-game-of-thrones-houses-nfl-sigils-nfl-teams-as-game-of-thrones-houses

Another Bit of Heraldic Serendipity

We were off in the wilds of southern Nevada last week, visiting my mother and other family members.  (We don't often go to the "fun" Las Vegas; we're always visiting the dusty, dirty, hot, desert town where my family lives.  Though they take up the same general geographic space, the two are not the same city.  For a good illustration of this dichotomy, please see Jo Ann's post about this trip at http://appletonstudios.blogspot.com/2015_10_01_archive.html#5627573139829315829)

Anyway, she needed to make a quick stop at her credit union to pull out a little spending money, and wouldn't you know it?  They had some heraldry displayed about the place for some kind of promotion they were having there.  (I didn't pay much attention to the promotion itself; she's a member, but I'm not, so I'm not their target market.)

I didn't have my camera with me, but if you've got a smart phone, you've always got a camera with you, so here's some slightly fuzzy shots of the heraldry on display there:

Proof once more that you can find heraldry of one sort or another everywhere!

The nice people (or person) behind the wappenwiki website have recently finished updating the site with drawings of all of the arms and banners on what is generally called the "Edward IV Roll."

This is a very long roll of the descent of Edward IV done on vellum and profusely illustrated, taking his ancestry all the way back to Adam and Eve and before them to God.

You can find high resolution images (in several sizes) of the various portions and some discussion about the Edward IV Roll on-line at the website of the Free Library of Philadelphia at http://www.freelibrary.org/medieval/edward.htm

They even had a .jpg of the entire roll in a single image at 1/3 size linked from each page for the individual sections.

Anyway, as I was saying, wappenwiki has redrawings of all of the arms and banners from the Edward IV Roll, and they look to be well done.

Here, for example is the shield of Normandy, at reduced size (to fit into the limits of this blog space).

You can visit the page for yourself, and see larger sizes of the images by clicking on each one.  From the page that opens up with a larger image, you can get to an even larger vector image by clicking "Original" on that page.

Anyway, it's very well done, and I thought it too good not to share.  You can find the Edward IV Roll shields and banners on the wappenwiki page at http://wappenwiki.org/index.php/Edward_IV_Roll

A Little Heraldic Levity

And some good advice, really.

There have been a lot of those "Keep Calm and ..." pictures floating about social media on the internet lately.  The other day I ran across this one, which I just couldn't resist sharing with you.

It's too bad I'm a herald and not an heraldic artist.  If I were, I think I'd have to buy one of these!

I Found a "Two-Fer"

Well, that's what they call 'em down here in Texas.  A "two-fer" is when you find "two things for the price of one."  Even when, in this case, the "price" was "free."

Driving home from work the other day, I ended up behind a Cadillac (the upper of the two coats of arms in the picture below, a simplified version of the arms of Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, who helped found the city of Detroit, Michigan) which had a specialty license plate which bore the arms of the sorority Delta Sigma Theta.

And here's a clearer version of the sorority's arms (taking a photograph with a phone camera through the front windshield while stopped a traffic light is not the most ideal of conditions):

Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool.  I'd never seen the Delta Sigma Theta insignia before, and in conjunction with the Cadillac logo/arms, I just couldn't resist trying to get a shot and sharing it with you.

It was a two-fer.

And That Goes for the Coat of Arms, Too!

I ran across this the other day, and just couldn't resist sharing it with all of you.

(You're welcome.  I'll see myself out now.)

Another Academic Coat of Arms from Hong Kong

While I was searching on-line for a picture of the full coat of arms of Hong Kong University for the last post, I ran across this interesting shield:

It's the coat of arms/logo of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

I find that in some respects it reminds me of some of the arms granted by the Canadian Heraldic Authority to members of First Peoples tribes and people of Far Eastern ancestry living in Canada.

Anyway, I found it intriguing enough that I felt I just had to share it with you all.

Enjoy!