http://www.ngw.nl/int/can/images/kelowna.jpg

I am going to have a map I designed in the group exhibition "Put Yourself on the Map" at the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art in Kelowna so thought I’d post the arms of Kelowna.  The seahorse supposedly represents Ogopogo, a monster residing in Lake Okanagan.

Too bad I don’t live there anymore- I’d go see it.

The funny thing about the arms of Kelowna is that they are painted incorrectly over city hall- the Vert areas are painted blue (so it looks like blue sky over mountians, rather than green valleys between them), and the apples were painted red for an eye-wrenching violation of the tincture rule.

Madalch wrote:

Too bad I don’t live there anymore- I’d go see it.

The funny thing about the arms of Kelowna is that they are painted incorrectly over city hall- the Vert areas are painted blue (so it looks like blue sky over mountians, rather than green valleys between them), and the apples were painted red for an eye-wrenching violation of the tincture rule.

This reminds me of the annoying fact that the arms of Pennyslvania and Maine, and the sinister supporter of Wisconsin are shown incorrectly on those states’ own flags!

Daniel C. Boyer wrote:

This reminds me of the annoying fact that the arms of Pennyslvania and Maine, and the sinister supporter of Wisconsin are shown incorrectly on those states’ own flags!

In what respect are they incorrect?

i really like this achievement. simple. clean. easy to read. actually fantastic. i really wish that the one’s on public display followed these arms exactly. this is a most attractive achievement IMHO.

Joseph McMillan wrote:

In what respect are they incorrect?

If you actually read the blazons, there isn’t water under the ship in the arms of Pennsylvania and it should actually be or, not either proper or perhaps (but less likely as it would be a violation of the rule of tincture) sable with argent sails; the field of the arms of Maine is argent; the sinister supporter of Wisconsin is a yeoman, not stated to be wearing a mining helmet, which he’d pretty much have to be as even under the most liberal interpretation a yeoman wouldn’t naturally be wearing the helmet of a miner—this seems to be a misinterpretation and a sort of flight-of-fancy based on that he’s leaning on a pick, but in heraldry people and animals are often carrying or leaning on all sorts of far-out things having no discernible connexion to their occupations and this has never been viewed as grounds for further flights of fancy.

The Pennsylvania case I consider one of imprecise blazoning rather than incorrect emblazonment. The present (1875) blazon says "Party per fess, azure and vert. On a chief of the first, a ship under sail; On a fess, or, a plough, proper; On a base of the second, three garbs or," but the earliest known blazon, dating from 1809, makes clear that the ship is supposed to be on a sea, as it has always been depicted from the time the arms were first devised: "The shield shall be parted Per Fess, Or, charged with a plough, Proper, in chief; on a sea wavy, Proper, a ship under full sail, surmounted with a sky, Azure; and in Base, on a field Vert, three Garbs or." (Note that the 1809 blazon erroneously described the tinctures on the original seal, which it was supposed to be describing. The original seal had the chief Argent rather than Azure and the base Azure rather than Vert.

Only reading the 1875 as if the authors had known anything about blazon—which they clearly didn’t—would lead to the conclusion that the ship should be Or. It has always been depicted, as far as I’ve ever been able to find, as proper.

I would agree that the field of the Maine arms should be Argent rather than sky blue with white clouds. Also, the water and embankment ought to be a compartment rather than in the base of the shield. The reason I asked about your description of it as incorrect is that there are some who claim that any deviation of the Maine arms from the original artistic depiction of the seal design is "wrong," which, as we know, is not correct.

As to Wisconsin, there’s nothing saying a yeoman ("a diligent, dependable worker") can’t be a miner, although I agree that my first impression would be that it refers to "a farmer who cultivates his own land." The pick would still be entirely consistent with the latter definition. (If the coil of rope in the hand of the dexter supporter were replaced with a stack of paperwork, he could pass for the yeoman, by yet a third definition!) Civil War era depictions of the arms, such as on this regimental color, http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~danielsofmassachusettsbaycolony/photo/2dwis.jpg show the sinister supporter hatless, so it would be interesting to know when the miner’s hat appeared. The other thing that’s happened since the arms were first designed is the division of the shield into quarters. Originally the US inescutcheon was simply between the charges (plow, crossed pick and shovel, arm and hammer, anchor), which were placed in pale and in flanks.

Joseph McMillan wrote:

As to Wisconsin, there’s nothing saying a yeoman ("a diligent, dependable worker") can’t be a miner, although I agree that my first impression would be that it refers to "a farmer who cultivates his own land." The pick would still be entirely consistent with the latter definition.

This is true as far as it goes, but I’ve got to think that, as "a diligent, dependable worker" is rather abstract in terms of conjuring to mind a specific visual representation and indeed would be almost useless as it would overlap with many possible jobs—should he be a sedulous office worker, scurrying to the Xerox room carrying a pile of papers?—(and if the supporter were going to have a miner’s helmet on as well as resting his hand on the pick, they darn well would have, or should have, specified "a miner"), and so one would assume that the non-noble farmer definition holds.  The pick is irrelevant to the question at hand, as the blazon specifies it—it could have specified anything (a sword, a water bouget, a marlet, a strand of DNA) whether or not it was relevant to the putative profession of the supporter.