What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 30 - Just for Fun

Do you have a pet? Or pets? A dog, or cat, hamster, ferret, or other critter? Or critters?

Have you thought that there may be ways of using your coat of arms with it/them?

As just one example to start, on the pet's shelter:

Or is that a little much?

Still, there are other appropriate uses. For example, a dog (or cat) tag:

Or a feeding station:

You could even dress your pet up in something like this:

And if you are lucky (and rich) enough to own horses, then there are:

Saddle blankets,

and decorative horse harness:

And of course you could always decorate your saddle similarly to the ones we saw on motorcycle seats in Part 28.

With a horse (or horses), you also have the opportunity to go all in and deck yourself out as a fully-armored medieval or Renaissance knight, complete with shield and crest!

So when you are thinking of ways to use your coat of arms, remember your animal friends.

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 29 - Just for Fun

Today we're going to start looking at ways of using or incorporating your coat of arms onto or into things that are "just for fun"; that is, stuff that just doesn't fit easily into some of the other categories of usage that we've been looking at, but which can certainly be "fun" ways to use heraldry in your daily life.

For example, we are just a month past Christmas now. Have you considered using your coat of arms on the family Christmas card? Here are a couple of recent examples of this:

Additionally, for mailing these cards (or any others over the course of a year, for that matter), some postal services allow you to upload a picture of your own (and for our purposes here, that could very easily be an image of your coat of arms) and, for a small fee in addition to the cost of postage, they will print that picture onto a sheet of postage stamps.

Also -- although let me say right off the bat that I do not necessarily recommend this -- on the envelope itself, using only heraldry and the postal code for the addressee. The Royal Mail delivered it to the addressee (Robert Noel, then Lancaster Herald, now Clarenceux King of Arms, at the College of Arms, London, hence the badge of Lancaster Herald and three shields, left to right, of Robert Noel, the College of Arms, and the City of London), but other postal services may not do as well.

Or you could just have some fun, as artist Lidia Kouznetsova did with her own coat of arms ...

... by creating some (non-Christmas) cards of natural creatures but colored with her heraldry, thusly:

Next time, we'll look at some other fun ways to use your heraldry.

Heraldry in the News!

If you haven't heard this already, Denmark has a newly-revised coat of arms.

And no, it wasn't done in response to remarks by the new President of the United States regarding buying/taking/invading Greenland, despite what some of the news stories said. (See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-jr-greenland-denmark-king-changes-royal-coat-arms-rcna186518) The timing was only coincidental; this change has been in discussion for much of 2024; indeed, two of the people on the committee with whom King Frederik X was consulting this past year are people I know personally and consider to be friends: Nils Bartholdy and Ronny Andersen. (It's kind of fun, to be quasi-adjacent to modern heraldic goings-on, especially when they make the international news!)

Anyway, there's a nice article about the whole thing over at The Conversation.com entitled "Denmark’s new royal coat of arms marks the end of a 400-year-long Swedish-Danish conflict" by Martin Sunnqvist (full disclosure: Martin is also a friend) of Lund University in Sweden. The article can be found on-line at https://theconversation.com/denmarks-new-royal-coat-of-arms-marks-the-end-of-a-400-year-long-swedish-danish-conflict-247924.

If you don't care to read the whole thing, the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) version is:

The arms of Denmark have a long history of being revised. The biggest change here is to remove the blue field and three crowns of Sweden, and to give greater prominence to the symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Here are images of the "old" arms and the new revision:

I personally think it's an improvement (a little less "cluttered"), a change which has nothing to do with any statements about Greenland made by the American President.

Heraldry in the News!

Ancient symbol, modern controversy.

"Belarusians have right to use armoured knight symbol, says heraldry specialist."

See more at: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2467145/belarusians-have-right-to-use-armoured-knight-symbol-says-heraldry-specialist?fbclid=IwY2xjawH_VYNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHTCSVzeN9sdAtRvdmbtKC2mLaj559vdqSBgwiMwLZfTXsh7Y259i3CNIOQ_aem_WoryJcyydUfOd3taK54sRw

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 28 - In the Garage

Let us now wander out from the house and into the garage. What are the ways in which we might use a coat of arms there?

Now, admittedly, most of us -- indeed, I suspect the overwhelming majority of us -- don't have the disposable income sufficient to warrant us having our own private train on which to display our coat of arms, like the Baron von der Bergquelle did here:

Nor do I suspect that most of us have our own private aircraft which might display our heraldry, as here:

Still, how might we use our armory? As I have noted a number of times in presentations introducing heraldry to genealogists, emulating Colonial Americans or Victorians by painting a coat of arms on the modern family coach, for example, a Volkswagen Beetle ...

... or down here in Texas where I live, the family pickup truck ...

... just doesn't seem "right" somehow. Still, you could do something similar, though perhaps a little less "in your face" ostentatious:

Or something like an armorial hood ornament ...

... or a car badge (or badges) ...

... would not be amiss.

There are options, too, for a display of your heraldry on a motorcycle, for example, on the side ...

... or done in any of several ways on the motorcycle's seat. Here is one done in monochrome outline on the rear of the seat ...

... and here's another in fully colored tooled leather on the upper surface of the seat:

What other ways can you think of to display your coat of arms on or in your family vehicles?

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 27 - In the Dressing Room

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!"

Coming back home from a big night out, all dressed in your heraldic finery, it's time to reverse the dressing process and start taking off everything that you had put on earlier.

But to aid you in this task, it's helpful to have appropriate places to put everything as you remove them.

For smaller items, an armorial dish like the one below, decorated with your coat of arms, on top of a dresser or table is entirely suitable.

For larger items, an armorially decorated and/or carved box or chest is a great way to store and organize (as well as keep dust free) your heraldic accoutrements.

And finally, because it's been a long night and you deserve to relax in comfort, a pair of comfy slippers, embroidered with your coat of arms, is a great way to end the night. (The pair shown here belonged to actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and thus are embroidered with his coat of arms. But what a great display of heraldry!)

This ends our posts on how to use your coat of arms in the dressing room. But I'm sure that I have probably missed some other ways to use heraldry here. What do you think I might have accidentally omitted?

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 26 - In the Dressing Room

Now that you (and your significant other) are fully dressed in all your armorial finery, you are just about ready to leave the house and make an impression out there.

There's just a few more final touches to consider, all of which may serve to further display your coat of arms.

Is it going to rain at any point while you are out there? Then you may want to take your umbrella. You know it's yours, and everyone else will, too, because it has a ferrule near the handle with your coat of arms (or as here, crest) engraved onto it.

If not raining, is it going to be bright and sunny out there? You might take your sunglasses, kept safe in the sunglass case embroidered with your coat of arms.

What's the temperature going to be like, either on the way or at your destination? If it's going to be warm, an heraldically-decorated folding fan tucked into a pocket or purse can be useful as well as another display of your arms.

Are you going to be walking any distance? You (like me) might not be as young as you once were, and may wish to have the aid of a cane or walking stick, armorially decorated, of course!

Are you all set now? Ready to go?

Well, then, take one final look at yourself in the handy mirror hung on a nearby wall and emblazoned with your coat of arms, and be on your way!

Next time, we'll look at a few final items in the dressing room suitable for when you come back home from a big night out.

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 25 - In the Dressing Room

Taking the advice of Abigail Adams to her husband, John, in 1776, today we are going to "remember the ladies" in our uses of heraldry in the dressing room.

Last time, we looked at some heraldic jewelry for men; today, we are reminded that women also can adorn themselves with armorial jewelry.

For example, the heraldic brooch:

Or necklaces which can show off a coat of arms in any one of several ways:

Or engraved onto a locket which can be worn as a necklace:

A necklace may even be combined with one of the heraldic rings (though designed for a lady's hand) that we looked at last time:

And we should not forget the heraldic bracelet:

Which can even take the form of the popular charm bracelet:

As another touch, you can find (or commission someone to make for you) armorial earrings, either stud ...

... or clip-on:

As a "crowning" touch, if you will pardon the pun, she could look back (very "retro") to the 14th century and wear an armorial hair net:

And finally, to "wrap" it all up (sorry, I just don't seem to be able to keep myself from making puns today), a silk armorial scarf:

What else can you think of that a lady might adorn herself with that is a display of heraldry?

What Can I Do With My Coat of Arms? Part 24 - In the Dressing Room

Now, having gotten dressed with all of our armorial finery, it's time to accessorize!

Heraldic rings come in several different styles: enameled, 

carved, 

and the ever-popular signet, which can be used to impress your coat of arms in sealing wax.

In our previous post, we saw a button set accompanied with a lapel pin. There are other pins that can also be used for armorial display:

And, of course, the armorial watch, which can either be a wristwatch ...

... or the classic pocket watch. (Well, this first one is a pocket sundial rather than a mechanical watch, but still ...):

Of course, a good armorial pocket watch deserves a good armorial pocket watch fob:

Next time, let's not forget the ladies!