Joe - looks better than I had pictured!
I was picturing fatter fretty like Mike’s, but barrulets rather than his fat bars or bendlets overall. If the bars are as fat as the fretty they tend to overwhelm or visually obscure the fretty beneath.
Joe’s approach - both fretty and bendlets skinny - IMO works because there is more of the fretty pattern showing between the barrulets. If the fretting is fatter then we need fewer & skinnier barrulets, or bunch them in the middle, to allow the fretty pattern to clearly show.
Ordinarily fat vs skinny fretting would merely be artistic license not expressed in the blazon. In this case, Joe’s version might warrant specifying fretty of x pieces" with x being maybe seven or so, so the artist wouldn’t use only three or four.
I’ve not seen it but what of fretty engrailed? Not sure that it signifies anything for the arms but it might add some character to the voids.
Ermine fretty engrailed Gules IIRC is used by some Scottish Macculloughs. (Apologies if I have that wrong.)
IMO adding engrailing to the fretty pattern under the barrulets wavy, would only add extra visual complication to a design which is already fairly complex and distinctive. Others may see it differently.
Correction - Macculough of Pilton bore Ermine a fret ( not fretty) engrailed Gules. Didn’t find fretty engrailed.
(FWIW I still think engrailing the fretty pattern in the current exercise wouldn’t be a plus.)
I feel that making the fret/ty engrailed will make it more ‘thorny’ looking than anything.
http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Roll/mcculloh.gif
Imagine explaining the arms.
Q: What are all those criss-crossed lines?
A: They represent a network.
Q: Oh, I see. That makes sense. And why do they have those prongs sticking out of them?
A: I thought it looked more interesting.
Macculough of Pilton apparently engrailed his fret to difference his arms from those of other Macculough families - not a concern in our current exercise. Also, IMO anyway, Mike’s artwork nicely illustrates that the engrailing doesn’t make the pattern visually clearer - quite the opposite - when there are other competing visual images; in that case the ermine field, in our case the overlying barrulets wavy. (If it was fretty engrailed on a plain field with no overlays, it would work because the engrailing wouldn’t be competing with other stuff.)
See also Alexander Schrenk’s truly beautiful fretty design on the first page of our Members List (the forum registered users, not the Society members Armorial) with only three bendlets each way & small crosses in each space between the fretting - this was the image I was thinking of initially, with fat fretting, before Joe posted his image with multiple fretty pieces that actually works well in the current case.
In Alex’s arms, or others with more than just fretty, while of course there would be no technical violation, IMO engrailing the fretting would visually weaken the design. Of course " de gustibus" & all that…
(If Alex should read this, please post your arms on our Armorial - too beautiful to be missing there!)
Snyder;102988 wrote:
My wife went into labor; after 48 hours of all natural, no medication labor we had our second daughter (9lbs, 23 inches)—Rose Marie. We are finally home and everyone is doing well.
Congratulations! Rose is a beautiful name. 48 hours of labor! I can’t recall the comedienne’s name, but she had a joke about long labor in which she said something to the effect of "I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for that long."