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!

We were just heading back to the car ...

... from the restaurant after a late dinner with family in Las Vegas, Nevada,* when we noticed this coat of arms decal in the back window of another car in the parking lot.  And to mangle a phrase from the old movie Love Story, "Having a smart phone means never having to miss a photographic opportunity."

It's not really a coat of arms that one would normally expect to see in desert environment like Las Vegas, since it's the arms of the State of Hawaii, and thus about as opposite environmentally as you can get.  (To give you an idea, the humidity in Las Vegas normally runs around 15-17%.  I've seen any number of rain clouds there that I could see were actually releasing rain, but the rain never hit the ground, since it evaporated completely in the dry air on the way down.  Hawaii, of course, is completely surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, and thus pretty humid!)

And here's a color depiction of the arms from an old postcard for comparison.

So, how cool was finding that!  And just stumbling across it so unexpectedly, too!


*  As my wife often says to her co-workers when she tells them that we are going to Las Vegas, and they get all impressed: "No, we're not going to the fun Vegas.  We're going to the dusty, little desert town Vegas, where all the people live and shop and stuff."
    My parents moved out there in 1963, my father to teach school there, so we're always going there to visit family and stuff, not to stay on the Strip and take in shows and gamble and sightsee and all the other stuff one expects to do in the "fun" Vegas.

Something Else Not To Do

As a contrast to the "kitchen-sink" school of heraldry, which tries to incorporate everything, including the kitchen sink, from its history into its coat of arms, there are some very nice, simply, easily identifiable civic coats of arms in the United States.

Unfortunately, these are sometimes perhaps a little too easily identifiable, as the arms of a different entity entirely.  One of the most egregious examples I have run across of this is the arms of New Bern, North Carolina.

As you can see, they have simply taken for their own the arms of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland.

Of course, it's not just similarly-named cities which have misappropriated these arms to themselves.  I believe I have posted before about this use of the arms by Road Bear RV Rentals & Sales in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Nice, simple, identifiable.  Identifiable as the arms of something else.  Sometimes it just makes me want to weep.

Heraldry in Las Vegas, Nevada

So there I was, strolling through McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, heading home after several days visiting with my mother and my sister, and a somewhat heraldic teeshirt in one of the shops there caught my eye.  It was black, and had a nicely drawn (and large) white fleur-de-lys on it, outlined with shiny metallic studs and surrounded by some complex line artwork.  So I entered the store, and looked for one in my size.  Alas, there were none.  There were several in smaller sizes, but nothing in my size or larger.  They did have a similar shirt done in black and dark gray on a gray shirt in my size, but that one didn’t really appeal to me as much.  So I stepped out of the store, with their having lost a really easy sale.

But ...

Right next door was another shop that was exclusively teeshirts, sweatshirts, and other clothing, so I thought I’d go ahead and see if they had anything heraldic in stock (and in my size).  Sure enough, they did.  So I came home with not one, but two, heraldic teeshirts added to my collection.

The first, this one in red, caught my eye not only because of its bright color, but because of the lines of the helmet and mantling, not to mention the inverted polearm issuing from beneath it.  The words “Las Vegas” and date on the scroll refer to the establishment of Las Vegas as a railroad town in 1905.

The other, in gray, has a coat of arms on this that reminds me of nothing quite so much as the flag of Nevada’s neighboring state of Arizona (http://flagspot.net/flags/us-az.html).  The mantling on the helm is very well done, though I haven’t quite decided what the part of the crest between the two wings is supposed to be.  It might be a sprig of three acorns, but I’m not at all certain about that.  I will have to ponder it some more as I wear the shirt.  Here again, the “Las Vegas” and “05" refer to the establishment of Las Vegas in 1905.  The scroll under the coat of arms has an error, I believe.  The scroll has the words “Nevada” and “Silver State,” the latter being the nickname of the state, and the words "Est. 1964," but Nevada became a state in 1864; I suspect the 1964 is an error for that notable date in Nevada history.  (I can’t think of what else it might be; I was living in the state in 1964, and don’t recall anything besides Nevada’s centennial of its admission into the Union that was worthy of note in that year, and I think I would have noticed if there had been.)

But the fact that I could find three different shirts bearing heraldic themes in a couple of small shops at an airport is more proof positive of my longstanding statement that “You can find heraldry everywhere!”

I Knew I’d Seen It Before!

On one of our trips back to Las Vegas last summer, I purchased up a cap from The Venetian Hotel and Casino gift shop with a coat of arms on it.  (Because I have to, you know, buy heraldry when I find some.)

I felt at the time that I had seen those arms before, though I couldn’t remember exactly where.  And, for some reason, I associated them with the German city of Augsburg.

So after we got home and recovered a bit from the travel, I went on-line to the Heraldry of the World website (http://www.ngw.nl/, formerly known as International Civic Heraldry) and looked up the arms of the city of Augsburg.  They were nothing like the arms on the cap.

Well, phooey!  Where the heck had I seen the coat of arms on the cap before?  For some reason, possibly because the style of the drawing of the arms reminded me of it, I started leafing through my copy of A.C. Fox-Davies A Complete Guide to Heraldry.  And there on page 429, figure 766, was the “Arms of Loschau or Lexaw, of Augsburg.”  (This coat also appears in the “big Fox-Davies,” the quarto edition of The Art of Heraldry, on page 380, figure 944.)

The two versions of the arms, on the cap and in Fox-Davies, are not an exact match.  Both have hatching for Azure (blue) on the dexter half of the shield (the left as you look at it), but there is no hatching for Or (yellow) on the cap, and the cap has a black field and a white or gold eagle on it to sinister (the right as you look at it), while the illustration in Fox-Davies is hatched for Or an eagle sable.  But all of those differences can be explained by the printing process used to create the cap (hence no dots for Or/yellow/gold) and the greater identifiability against the tan ground of the cap for the shield and eagle by reversing the tinctures in the sinister half.

Why had I thought of Augsburg when I saw the arms on the cap?  I have no idea.  But every once in a while, like Han Solo in Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope, “Sometimes I amaze even myself.”

None of this, of course, explains why The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada  was selling a cap with a German coat of arms on it.  Some things, I suppose, are just meant to remain mysteries.

Heraldry in Las Vegas, Nevada

A week after out trip to North Carolina, we were back in Las Vegas, Nevada, where family members have lived since 1963. I didn’t have a lot of “free” time to go searching for heraldry, but did run across the following sign incorporating a coat of arms between my mother’s home and the hotel where we were going to be staying.

As many of you might recognize, these really aren’t the arms of Road Bear RV Rentals and Sales, but rather the company has simply copied the arms of the city of Berne, Switzerland. Admittedly, I can see the attraction; the arms are canting, that is to say, they are a pun on the name of both the city and the company here. That is, bär is German for bear, and sounds like the name Berne and bear. (The arms of Berlin feature a bear for the same reason.)

Still, I have to wish they hadn’t just used the arms of Berne for their heraldic logo.

Another Coat of Arms in Las Vegas

The other coat of arms, and this one really is a coat of arms, that we ran across in our recent trip to Las Vegas was actually found in the "fun" Las Vegas.  It was a coat carved into the facade of The Venetian hotel and casino in the heart of "The Strip" (that portion of Las Vegas Boulevard south of Sahara Avenue, where most of the really big hotel-casinos are located).

Since there is no hatching on the carving, it's difficult to know who's arms these are.  For a shield that is bendy, there are, for example, some 35 possibilities in Popoff's Répertoire d'héraldique italienne I, Florence 1302-1700 alone.  Identification would depend entirely upon what the tinctures are.  And, of course, the arms here are presumably Venetian, not Florentine.

It would be nice to think, though, that they are the canting arms of Bandini. But that's just because I have a soft spot for canting arms.  (Ah, I'm such a romantic when it comes to heraldry!)

Heraldry Seen on a Recent Trip

I suppose a more accurate title would be "Heraldry seen while I was on a recent trip," since it was Jo Ann and I who were on the trip, and not the heraldry.  But be that as it may ...

We had gone to spend a few days in Las Vegas, Nevada,* for attend my father's 85th birthday dinner and party.  (My parents have lived in southern Nevada since 1963 and in Las Vegas proper since 1966, so they've been there for a while.)  Since we flew in on a Tuesday and out again on that Friday, with finalizing the preparations for the dinner and party and visiting with all the family that came in for the occasion and all that goes with that, there wasn't a lot of time for sightseeing or cruising around looking for heraldry.

We did, however, run across this little sign containing what might loosely be termed a coat of arms for SouthWest Air Conditioning, Inc. as we were driving down one of the major roads in Vegas (double-checking, it was South Valley View Boulevard).  (I will apologize for the quality of the photo, but considering it was taken at a distance through the windscreen of a moving car, the fact that Jo Ann was able to capture it at all I find remarkable.  I love having a wife who is willing to go out of her way to try to get pictures of heraldry and coats of arms-like logos for me!)

I suppose it would be blazoned something along the lines of: Gules the letters S and W conjoined in bend sable fimbriated between two bendlets (or ribbands) argent.  I did enjoy their tie-in to heraldry and what it might stand for in the phrase "Shield of Quality" on the sign.

Once again, though, it just goes to show you, that you can find heraldry (and pseudo-heraldry) everywhere!


* As Jo Ann often likes to note to her co-workers when they get excited when she tells them that she's going on a trip to Las Vegas, "No, we're not going to the fun Vegas; we're going to the dusty little desert town Vegas where the ordinary people live who provide all of the support services for the fun Vegas."

More Heraldry ... in Las Vegas, Part 4 of 4

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve found heraldry in some odd places, places I never really expected to find a coat of arms, and yet, there they were. But these coats of arms pretty much take the cake for the "odd or unexpected place" category. We were finishing up dinner at the buffet in the Bellagio hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, and I needed to use the restroom. So off I went, a man on a mission.

And immediately after went back to our table, asked my wife to borrow her camera (because I wasn’t going to be taking any pictures, and had left mine back at our hotel), and headed right back to the restoom. Because, by golly, right there in the men’s room was heraldry! Just inside the entrance were four framed prints of sailing ships, each with a coat of arms (well, one of them might not really be considered to be armory, but still, it’s on an escutcheon). So I tried not to block the traffic in and out too much as I took photographs of the prints and then closeups of the shields on each of them. And here’s the combined results.

Heraldry. It’s insidious. It can be found anywhere. And everywhere. Including, as I found out, in the men’s room at the buffet in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

More Heraldry ... in Las Vegas, Part 3 of 4

We continued to find serendipitous heraldry later that weekend, as the seven of us went out to eat at the buffet at the Bellagio (just across Flamingo Road from Caesar’s Palace). I’d seen some pretty good reviews of the buffet at the Bellagio - all of which it more than lived up to - and so we all met there and sat down to a really great feast.

The room was decorated with various framed prints. And I’m sitting there at the table and looking around occasionally (when I wasn’t either shoveling food in or talking with one relative or another), and by golly! There on the wall was, I thought sure, some more heraldry. So I borrowed my wife’s camera (silly me! I’d left mine at the hotel. I wasn’t going to be taking any pictures at dinner. Right?), and walked over, and sure enough, there was a framed print of the Calabria area of Italy, with not one, but three, coats of arms in the upper left-hand corner.

I guess I’m just going to have to start carrying my camera around with me all the time, because apparently you just never know when you might run across another coat of arms!

More Heraldry ... in Las Vegas, Part 2 of 4

Continuing on our odyssey around Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, we found ... more heraldry! This in addition to all of the statues, etc. placed around the pool and various fountains inside and outside of what have become heraldic charges: dolphins and seahorses, winged lions and winged sea-lions and Grecian sphinxes.

This time, the heraldry was outside, in the valet parking area. (I’ve come to love the valet parking at the hotels in Las Vegas. It’s free. Just tip the guy who brings your car to you a couple of dollars, and you’re good to go!) Anyway, we’d gone out front of Caesar’s (to see more statues, don’t you know), and there, under the watchful eye of Caesar himself (looking like he’s saying, "You left your car parked over there.") ...

was another nice-looking bit of heraldry, this time on a sleek, black, convertible Ferrari. The arms, of course, are the logo of the Ferrari company, placed prominently on the sides of the car just in front of the doors. (And, of course, you can see the horse forceny in the center of the back of the car, too.)

Now, that would be a fun piece of heraldry to own!

More Heraldry ... in Las Vegas, Part 1 of 4

I had the opportunity early last week to get back out to America’s "Sin City", Las Vegas, Nevada, for a couple of days. (Now, before you get all excited for me, let me tell you, as my wife often repeats, "This isn’t the fun Vegas; this is the dusty city in the middle of the desert Vegas" where my parents - and my next-to-youngest son and his wife and new daughter - live. So we were visiting family, not partying and gambling our brains out.)
Still, we did manage to get out to the Strip to visit a couple of the major hotels out there. Which visit proved to me once again that you can find heraldry anywhere and everywhere.

For example, we were wandering around in Caesar’s Palace, just looking to see what we could see. We’d gone there because Jo Ann wanted to see some of the statuary that they’ve put up, and there was plenty of that. But as we wandered down this hall and up that way, we ran across the Cartier jewelry store. That by itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy (especially since they weren’t open yet), but on either side of their entrance was a coat of arms: to the left, Portugal; and to the right, Spain. Both done in gold on black veined marble, and even hatched (partially, anyway).













Then, down another hall around the corner, a very nice window display with a tapestry containing ... you guessed it! More heraldry. This time, the arms of France (well, sort of, with only two fleurs-de-lys instead of the expected three) and Navarre.


Not at all the sort of thing I expected to find early on a weekend morning in a hotel/casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Heraldry, it’s everywhere!

Real Heraldry ...

... in Las Vegas? Out in the desert of southern Nevada? Really? Well, yes, but they actually copied it from Italy, so it’s not like it’s native heraldry.

Outside of Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas Strip (which consists of Las Vegas Boulevard South going south from where Sahara Avenue crosses it out past the city limits) they have, among other things, a working scaled-down (but still large) replica of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy. Near that replica is another fountain, pictured here, also copied from the real one in Rome, with those really great dolphins (urinant, if we’re going to use the heraldic term for their posture) holding up that big escallop shell with their tails, atop which (the shell) is a triton pouring water out of a whelk shell. It’s a very exuberant composition all in all.

Nestled into the space between two of the dolphins’ bodies is an achievement of arms. Specifically, it’s the arms of Pope Urban VIII (born Maffeo Barberini), whose arms were Azure three bees or. Here, the arms are carved with the crossed keys of St. Peter issuing from behind the shield, each key encircled by a dolphin’s tail, and the shield itself surmounted by the papal tiara. You can see them better in the detail of the fountain here.

Who’d have thought that you would, or could, find a papal achievement of arms in the middle of the American southwest? I swear, I think it becomes truer every time I say it: "Heraldry is everywhere!"