Visit cards with or without heraldic engraving? I’ve seen members of prominent Spanish and Iberoamerican families having both types of cards (With and without such engraving) but I have to say these days they are ebracing the "English" way (note I am not saying the American way) and somehow I think French and Italians are more open to the idea.

Personal accesories I think have been omitted:

Cufflinks

Flask

A Blazer

Riding crops

Is a cypher an heraldic device? Table lamps (porcelain) with a cyper is possible ...

Of course portraits…

Some of the blades in the salle d’armes (I think today some german companies can engrave your CoA in a sable or sword)

Tapestries

Stained glass

Sr. Valarezo-Dueñas,

Do you see a difference between the cypher and the monogram? I have always viewed the cypher as a representation of a person’s name with one or two stylised letters and possibly some additional non-letter device and a monogram being the intertwining of two or more letters that form a persons name. Is this how you see these terms?

I am curious, with so many given names and with two to four family names, how does one decide how to form a Spanish monogram?

In reference to an earlier discussion in this thread here is an article on the use of calling cards in present day America: http://www.trygstad.org/blog/archives/week_2003_07_20.html

Until I read the story from the link, I’d completely forgotten about having calling cards that I used with my high school graduation announcements, oh so many moons ago.

I guess people demand communication information (phone number, email address) these days, which is why calling cards are passe.

I agree with David. I use both a cypher and a monogram. My cypher consists of an interlaced Latin letters M and A (for my first and family name), ensigned by a Sharifian Turban (traditional mark of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h.). For a monogram, I use my letters MHA in English, or when i Arabic, Mem, Haa, Ain. I can upload an image of it if possible.

With all due respect to heraldry, I prefer to use my cypher or monogram on small things, such as seals, embossers, writing paper, and buttons and athe like, and leave the coat of arms for such things as a Library painting, a bookplate, engraved on the entrance of a house, or painted on the door of carriage or automobile. But that’s just me! Guess I’m not that much of a traditionalist then! BTW, my arms for use in Egypt consist of my shield also ensigned by a Sharifian Turban. But for using them here, such as in the painting I commissioned Denny to make, I include just my crest and no nobiliary trappings.

By the way, something I noticed when viewing the dinnerware of Egyptian royalty in the Abdine Palace museum, coats of arms were used almost exclusively for drinkware (glasses, bottles, cups, and the like) and monograms/cyphers used on all others (plates, trays, silverware, etc.) as well as drinkware. Sometimes the royal crown alone was used on dinnerware. I wonder if this was "out of respect" of not eating or putting food on the royal coat of arms, which, besides being used by all members of the royal family, was also the national symbol of Egypt???

Regards,

Calling cards are a great use of heraldry…

But don’t people just type numbers into their cell phones now?

True, but as a hopless romantic myself I’d like to see polite society return!

PS- Nice to see you posting again Colin, thought you disappeared!

The custom in the English-speaking world (enshrined not only in J. P. Brooke-Little’s section on applied heraldry in the English edition of Neubecker’s Heraldry: Sources Symbols and Meaning but also in either Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt’s etiquette book—don’t remember which, maybe both) is that armorial devices are not used on personal cards.

I doubt that there’s any good "reason" why this should be so, any more than there’s any particular reason for the placement of dinner knives with the blade facing the plate or forks with the tines up instead of down.  It’s just the way it’s done.

(There’s a heraldic relevance to the placement of the silverware, because the custom affects where the crest is located on engraved silver.  At one time forks were placed tines down, and the crest was engraved on what we would consider the back of the handle. This is one way of identifying how old silver flatware is. Thus, if you were to engrave your crest on the back of the handle instead of the front today, the cognoscenti would spot you as a poseur, because you would appear to be pretending that your silver was older than it really is!)

Anyway, whether there’s a reason or not, not using arms on personal cards is the traditional custom in the English-speaking world. According to Brooke-Little, it’s different in other places, but in England, and, according to the etiquette books, in the US as well, being handed a card with heraldry on it is a signal that the call is business and not social.

Quote:

I doubt that there’s any good "reason" why this should be so, any more than there’s any particular reason for the placement of dinner knives with the blade facing the plate or forks with the tines up instead of down.

See…I had no idea this was the case. I did not know that knives were placed like this. Sure I’ve seen it at fancy restaurants, but I’ve never paid attention to it.

As for the heraldic side of it all, I can appreciate the tradition of not doing it and would probably go that way. However, after seeing the doc’s above it is really rather nice I think…at least visually.

David:

For me a cypher would have some additional elements (i.e. rank crowns) frequently with symbolic meaning. About what letters do you pick when doing a monogram the fact to have many nammes and last names just expand the alternatives

Some of my ascendants (paternal side) carried de composed last name Espinosa de los Monteros and they have a cypher in their house with the letters AE (Agustin Espinosa de los Monteros) holded by a dog with a axe flamed (on fire -not sure if flamed is the word) because it was the heraldic beast of the Monteros de Espinosa so the cypher contained A (gustin) E (spniosa) and the dog (de los Monteros)

I am sure there’s other examples probably in English architectural heraldry.

Hmm, bit of an unusual question, but between a cypher/monogram and a coat of arms, which has the priority/superiority?

I.E, is there a precedence given to one over the other, or is it a matter of personal style?

Regards,

Quote:

I doubt that there’s any good "reason" why this should be so, any more than there’s any particular reason for the placement of dinner knives with the blade facing the plate or forks with the tines up instead of down. It’s just the way it’s done.

Knives are turned blade inward to indicate one has a benign intent toward the other diners.  Forks are a much later innovation than knives and are placed so that the decoration or engraving is visible to the diner.

If one eats European style with tines down, it makes sense to decorate the back of the fork.  Laying it tines down allows the decoration to be seen.  If one eats American style, the opposite makes sense.

Quote:

Thus, if you were to engrave your crest on the back of the handle instead of the front today, the cognoscenti would spot you as a poseur, because you would appear to be pretending that your silver was older than it really is!)

New silver which I have purchased has the decoration on the back.  This was not my choice, it just came that way.

If I were engraving arms on new silver, I would decide which eating style I wished to use and engrave accordingly.

/Charles

Hope this isn’t off topic, but isn’t eating tines down the normal way to eat? I don’t know if this is just how I was raised, but how can you possibly use a fork another way? Or am I just having difficulty visualizing this?

Someone please explain!

Regards,

MohamedHossam wrote:

Hope this isn’t off topic, but isn’t eating tines down the normal way to eat? I don’t know if this is just how I was raised, but how can you possibly use a fork another way? Or am I just having difficulty visualizing this?

Someone please explain!

It is off topic unless unless this question leads to a discussion of carving the roast beef fesswise or decorating the cake semey of chocolate roundels.

If one eats with the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right with both implements working together, the tines would normally be downward unless one was eating peas or some other tricky food. If on the other hand, one were to eat as most Americans, one would use the knife and fork separately in the right hand, except of course when cutting tough meat. In the American manner the tines are almost always upward rather than downward.

So, with all of the etiquette talk, one wonders what is the real etiquette today? It may have been historically one thing, but are we bound by that today?

Denny,

You don’t want to hear the answer to this.

It takes us back to the snicker test. Yes, these things matter to people to whom they matter. No, you’re not bound by them. Yes, they (the people to whom these things matter) will think you (not you personally, but anyone) are an uncultured boob if you ignore the etiquette rules.  This doesn’t mean the unmannerly person is bad, and it doesn’t mean that the people to whom good manners matter will actually ridicule him to his face.  That would depend on whether they are polite or rude—one can have good table manners and be rude and arrogant, just as one can have poor table manners and be kind and considerate.  But eventually, even the nice people to whom table manners matter will stop inviting the unmannerly person to dinner.  They will just find it too stressful.  (I’m not kidding.)

Going to David’s point, Judith Martin (Miss Manners) observed in a lecture she gave at Harvard that at one time European and American etiquette on the use of knives and forks was the same—you cut the meat with the knive in the right hand, then switched the fork around and put the food in your mouth with the right hand, tines up. At some point, however, the Europeans changed and adopted the fashion they use today. She points out (only slightly satirically) that since the mark of higher manners is that they are more formalized and complicated and less utilitarian, the American style is not only older (therefore better) but also more civilized.

Anyway, this would seem to indicate that the placement of the silverware on the table was not totally related to the way it was held in eating. Also, I think, but am not sure, that when the tines were placed down, spoons were also placed with the concave part of the spoon down, and of course no one would try to eat soup by trying to balance it on the back of the spoon!  (To keep this heraldic, the spoons, like the forks, were engraved on what we think of as the back side.)