David Pritchard;57683 wrote:
Father Byers,
A gem of a design! Appropriately Germanic in style. This just proves that while some designs are good heraldry, others are both good heraldry and art. I strongly encourage Mr. Bohn to adopt your proposed design.
I’ll second that! :D
Take care,
No intention to include a "J". I rarely look at arms upside down.
Thanks for the kind remarks, all. Who would have thought that a bland vegetable could cause such excitement?
I want to thank everyone who contributed to this discussion, especially of couse Fr. Byers for his outstanding design. I will work out the other elements of an achievement in the near future, but I now have a shield (and an avatar)!
Jay—congrats on your armorial achievement! (double meaning intentional 
Top it off with a simple helm & mantling, maybe based on the Zurich Wappenroll (IIRC), and a jay-bird for a crest, and you’re in business! (A blue jay comes to mind, but if there is another variety that could be plausibly drawn in gold & green, without looking like a parrot, that would IMO be cleaner.)
It just struck me that maybe a green and gold parrot would be just the bird for the crest. The colors would fit with the arms better than a blue jay, and is not a parrot traditionally blazoned as a popinjay?
Jay—
I was playing around and did the following version of your arms in the style of the Codex Manasse. The crest is: The head of a popinjay Vert beaked and its eye ringed Or holding in its beak a lima bean Or sprouting Vert as in the arms.
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7204/bohn01me2.th.png
You may be going for an entirely different style and may not like the popinjay crest, but, as I say, I was just fooling around.
Lightning does strike twice in the same place! This could be fittingly inserted in any of the older Germanic rolls.
Father, you’re on a roll.
Here is a nice image of a popinjay in case Jay needs more convincing.
Nicely done, Father! Hey, Jay, wada ya say?
I’m not that familiar with Germanic heraldry. It looks like the design is complete without torse or mantling. Is that so? (Not a problem whether it is or isn’t.) The lima bean in the beak is certainly recognizable. Thank you.
My wife says we have to plant lima beans in the garden now.
The German view, as I understand it, is generally that personal arms are not complete without a crest, and that a shield is not displayed with a crest unless the helm and mantling are also included.
Even if you have a crest, of course, any tradition would permit you to display the shield alone.
For a very nice collection of German arms, see www.wappenindex.de. Click the caption under the arms in the center labelled "Weiter zur Datenbank" and then browse by letter of the alphabet.
Jay Bohn;57759 wrote:
I’m not that familiar with Germanic heraldry. It looks like the design is complete without torse or mantling. Is that so?
Yes, the achievement is complete, albeit in a very archaic style. Historically, the torse is not much used in German heraldry, so an achievement is quite complete without one. The scraps of green flowing from the crest and flapping behind the helm are the mantling in its original, minimal form, as it often appears in early German heraldry.
Ah, I misunderstood the question. Fr. Byers explains it far better than I did.
One could, of course, have the arms emblazoned in a more modern style with the same basic composition, with or without a torse. Here’s a beautiful example by Elke Zarnoch:
http://www.wappen-heraldik.com/wappen.jpg
That is a magnificent emblazonment! Thanks for posting it, Joseph.
I have a proposal for your motto should you choose to have one: Ecce Homo Qui Est Faba meaning Behold The Man Who is a Bean. This maybe familiar to some of our readers as the opening chorus for the Mr. Bean television series.
