as a side note, sorry to stray from your initial thread here Lisa, i really, really, really think heraldists ought to read Or and Argent by Abp. Heim. and further that with von Volbroth’s words on it (thanks for sharing those with me a couple of years ago Ton). as with all things in heraldry…there is no real hard and fast "rules". Or and Argent are violated often enough for a scholar of this craft to write a book illustrating such and making such ‘hard line’ stands on it nil imo.
While as a "rule" the color/metal business is sometimes "violated" with varying degrees of artistic success, IMO its still a very useful guideline or "rule of thumb" in designing new arms. Why intentionally choose a design that will require above-average artisitc skill to emblazon?
Michael F. McCartney;78554 wrote:
While as a "rule" the color/metal business is sometimes "violated" with varying degrees of artistic success, IMO its still a very useful guideline or "rule of thumb" in designing new arms. Why intentionally choose a design that will require above-average artisitc skill to emblazon?
read Or and Argent by Abp. Heim.
I will admit I haven’t read Heim’s treatise, but others who have tell me that most of his examples of violations aren’t really violations by the usual understanding of the rule, e.g. metal next to (rather than on) metal, small objects and areas (gold lion with red tongue on blue field), charges lying on top of a parted field, etc. True?
Joseph McMillan;78570 wrote:
I will admit I haven’t read Heim’s treatise, but others who have tell me that most of his examples of violations aren’t really violations by the usual understanding of the rule, e.g. metal next to (rather than on) metal, small objects and areas (gold lion with red tongue on blue field), charges lying on top of a parted field, etc. True?
I’m at work and don’t have access to the book (I might scan some images tonight at home) but, here’s the blazon of Heim’s arms (from the book):
HEIM: Argent, on a “Dreiberg” (triple mount) Vert a lion rampant Or holding a horseshoe Azure surmounted by a mullet of the third.
There are many more examples like this in the book.
From Heim’s obituary in The Independent:
Quote:
In 1994 Heim published Or and Argent, examining the ancient heraldic rule against placing silver and gold next to each other, and suggesting that the reasoning behind the rule was suspect, and presenting more than 300 coats of arms in which the rule had been broken.
kimon;78578 wrote:
I’m at work and don’t have access to the book (I might scan some images tonight at home) but, here’s the blazon of Heim’s arms (from the book):
HEIM: Argent, on a “Dreiberg” (triple mount) Vert a lion rampant Or holding a horseshoe Azure surmounted by a mullet of the third.
There are many more examples like this in the book.
Yes, I know Heim’s own arms are a flagrant violation. I imagine that’s why he wrote the book.
I wonder if His Grace would have maintained that violations of a rule call into question the existence of the rule if placed in some other context, like rule 13 of the Rules of Golf, or the 7th commandment (by either numbering system).
here’s a few of the images from the work covering some of the English, Irish, Danish and French arms he found researching this IIRC—some are ‘next to’ as Joe’s friends said, but many are clearly ‘one on the other’—these two examples are Danish and Irish ones…also one should really read the book to see what he says are his motives and how he found what he found. it is a very good read (imo) and almost as good as his Ecclesiastical piece. anyway here’s those examples:
Danish
http://a.imageshack.us/img340/7415/heimorargentexamples.jpg
Danish plate arms key (1)
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/723/heimorargentexamplesthr.jpg
Danish plate arms key (2)
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/3852/heimorargentexamplesfou.jpg
also Marco Foppoli’s (a heraldic master imo) own arms "violate" this rule as well and his arms are magnificent! of course both he and Heim were friends as i understand it (open to correction if i am incorrect) and Heim’s emblazon of Foppoli’s arms are quite remarkable. see them at bottom of Foppoli’s home page of his website: http://www.marcofoppoli.com/
Donnchadh;78587 wrote:
Danish plate arms key (1)
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/723/heimorargentexamplesthr.jpg
Danish plate arms key (2)
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/3852/heimorargentexamplesfou.jpg
Let’s go through these statistically, and assume that these fifteen are a fair sample of the "more than 60" that Heim was able to find in a collection of about 1200 (5%).
1. Von Podewils - parted field, in which one part is checky. This is like calling the arms of Stewart (Or a fess checky Azure and Argent) a tincture violation. Heim’s image shows the stag issuant Or, but the blazon doesn’t.
2. Schumacher - the weird blazon obscures the nature of the arms. More clearly: Per fess, the chief per pale Argent and Gules a pallet Or, the base Vert three hearts Gules, over all a bar and all within a bordure Or. All the metal on metal involves ordinaries surmounting parted fields—not an issue. There appears to be a color on color violation in base, but hearts gules=hearts proper. The norm on much of the continent seems to be that charges in their natural colors are an exception. But let’s call this a violation to be on the conservative side.
3. Von Pultz - clear violation.
4. Puder - a metal ordinary overlaying a field that is quarterly of a metal and color. Not a violation.
5. Gas i Fyn - goose heads Argent on Or—again, goose heads are naturally white, so could be treated as proper, but I’ll count it as a violation anyway.
6. Ambring - again, a metal ordinary overlaying metal subordinaries in opposite directions. Not a violation.
7. Hohendorff - gold pallet on silver, a violation.
8. Lund - minor, but a violation.
9. Munthe af Morgenstierne - violation.
10. Beldenak - one could think of this as a tierced field and thus not a violation, but I’ll score it as a violation.
11. De Thygesen - violation
12. Sadersen - metal charge on a parted field—not a violation.
13. Walter - can he be serious? counting the line where a metal charge on a colored field is dimidiated with a metal field? Not a violation, not even close. This is the kind of thing I was talking about.
14. Stavenvoet - metal charge (lion) on parted field—not a violation.
15. Navesen - violation.
So of these 15 Danish examples, 6 are not violations and several others are arguable. If we apply this same ratio of "false positives" to the total of 60 that Heim found out of 1200, we get an estimated violation rate of 3%.
What’s the over/under on the number of golfers out of every 100 who sometimes improve a lie? More than three?
Donnchadh;78588 wrote:
also Marco Foppoli’s (a heraldic master imo) own arms "violate" this rule as well and his arms are magnificent! of course both he and Heim were friends as i understand it (open to correction if i am incorrect)
Apparently so—and do you suppose that Heim just might have been the designer of Foppoli’s arms? And thus "proving" a point? If I have a theory that the existence of arms with people’s faces in natural colors makes "peach" a heraldic tincture, can I then go out and design arms for all my friends: "Peach a fess Gules," "Azure three chevronels braced Peach," "Gules a lion rampant Argent armed and langued Peach"? And if I do, does that prove my argument that peach is a heraldic tincture?
To be serious for a moment: everyone should know I’m no absolutist on most of these rules/standard/principles. But before designing arms that ignore the tincture rule, people ought to be sure their reason for breaking it is more compelling than the reason why it exists.
i want to make sure i understand you Joe, so please forgive me if i’m wrong and correct me where i’m wrong.
you said in a previous post that you questioned his motive for doing this piece, as a means of validating his own arms or something like that, correct?
you are now picking apart the Danish example above in order to debunk his findings (which seems like you’re questions his scholarship especially in light of your questioning his motive—i think this is where i may be wrong), correct?
you said you had not read the book as of yet, correct?
my only comments to all of that would be to encourage you to get a copy and read the book for yourself before you go down this path. in the end you may have the same opinion(s) about his work and his motives, heck, you may even be right on each of those accounts. but, i’d still encourage you to read it first.
look, i’m not a "fan" of Or and Argent on a shield if for no other reason than it’s harder to see a contrast and i certainly don’t have a dog in this race. but, after reading this work, and not suspecting his personal motives or his scholarship, i found that it is, at the least, an option with some foundation. not the one i’d choose for myself, nor be my first recommendation to a client, but it appears to be a valid option none-the-less.
just my opinion Joe, which we all know that and a dollar will get you an item off the dollar menu at McDonald’s. 
as to if he designed Foppoli’s arms, i have no idea. i know Foppoli used to have some bio on his arms somewhere on the web…can’t remember if it was his own website, or, in his member’s arms page at HSS, which i can’t even get into at all now (tech problem not banned i’m sure). but i can’t remember exactly the history behind them, something about being from Northern Italy and more Swiss than Italian or something like that, so i can’t say for sure. maybe Heim did design them, but maybe they’re old/inherited arms from that area of Northern Italy he comes from and identifies with. i don’t know.
p.s. i don’t want to see peach added as a heraldic color…God spare us…not one more color to debate…you should strike that comment from the website so no one can start to think of it!...lol…don’t let that cat out of the bag cuz we won’t be able to get it back in. lol.
Well motive is hard to prove, but I certainly question Heims scholarship on the basis of the Irish examples that have been posted. To prove that the Or/Argent rule is not really a rule I would contend that Heim needed to show examples of it and then show that
a) The examples were not due to
i) faded tinctures
ii) missing tinctures
b) The examples that remain continue over time, i.e. they are regularly accepted, and are not one-offs due to
i) correct depiction of an incorrect or partial blazon
ii) a misunderstanding by the artist of a complex blazon
The winnowing process in a & b should leave a hard core of examples that cannot be explained any other way. By showing the examples that have been rejected and then the examples that cannot be explained produces a much stronger argument for the Heim thesis.
Looking at the Irish examples
In the standard forms of Christy, How, O’Rourke, Logan and Purcell the parts of the arms that are shown in Argent are Sable. Unless there are multiple examples of this form of these arms an error seems likely.
In Faulkner and Fanning the falcons and doves (respectively) are Proper. BGA gives no tincture for the Fanning chevron but the Fannings of Tipperary and Waterford who used these arms had recorded them with Ulster so there will be records to check.
McGill, Egan, Ferguson, Breen appear to be due to misunderstoon blazons.
McGill: The crest is identical to that of the Viscount of Oxenfoord and there was an Irish branch of his family with that used the same crest and the Oxenfoord arms within a bordure. This suggests another misunderstood blazon, that of McGill of Ballynester being Gules three martlets Or within a bordure Argent. Note the Gules and Argent wreath.
Egan: Azure two palets Argent, over all a Saltire Or. The palets appear to have become pellets (and then incorrectly tinctured Or) whilst the party field has become Argent. Note that the wreath is a dark colour and Or.
Ferguson: These unusual arms appear to be a mis-emblazon of the arms of Craigdarroch, Dumfriesshire Argent a lion rampant Azure on a chief Gules a star between a cross-crosslet fitchee and a rose of the field
Breen: Again a mis-emblazon, this time of the arms of Breen of County Kerry Or a dexter hand couped at the wrist Gules on a chief of the last a mullet between two crescents Argent
Griffin may well be a mix of missing tincture and minor misunderstanding of the blazon. There are Griffin arms (Irishness not stated)
Gules three griffins heads two in chief couped Argent and one in base erased Or
For Lebas, Devine, English and Gilroy I have found no trace or nothing similar to the arms shown on which to form an opinion.
I don’t know if these sixteen are all the Irish arms that Heim collected but given that a couple of hours with BGA throws up potential doubts for 75% of them does lead to concern for his method and the quality of his argument.
I don’t have a copy of Or and Argent and it would be good if Denny, who does, can come back and show that Heim addressed these difficulties. If he did not crtitically question his sources I fear the possibility of a case of GIGO.
Heim may have been a great heraldic artist and designer, but that doesn’t mean he had to have been a great historian of heraldry.
Sorry.
James
Donnchadh;78596 wrote:
i want to make sure i understand you Joe, so please forgive me if i’m wrong and correct me where i’m wrong.
you said in a previous post that you questioned his motive for doing this piece, as a means of validating his own arms or something like that, correct?
Possibly, but there’s nothing dishonorable about that, and it doesn’t affect the validity of his findings anyway.
Quote:
you are now picking apart the Danish example above in order to debunk his findings (which seems like you’re questions his scholarship especially in light of your questioning his motive—i think this is where i may be wrong), correct?
I’m questioning (a) his interpretation of what is a tincture violation, and (b) his substantive conclusion, which, as I understand you to be summarizing it, that the tincture rule isn’t really a rule. That’s also how I’ve seen others summarize his argument.
I think the logic of this statement is profoundly flawed: "If I can find X percent of cases where people broke the law, then there is no law." It is all the more flawed if X=5, and more flawed yet if X isn’t really 5 but in fact closer to 3.
Quote:
you said you had not read the book as of yet, correct?
I did say that. There are a great many books on heraldry I haven’t read.
Quote:
my only comments to all of that would be to encourage you to get a copy and read the book for yourself before you go down this path.
Go down what path? I’m not entitled to views on this subject if I don’t read Heim? Does that mean that everyone who expressed a view on the tincture rule before Heim wrote the book is also disqualified, since by definition they had not read the book? You picked the examples. I replied to the examples you picked, and conclude that they don’t prove what people who have read the book say is Heim’s argument.
As I think about this subject, I wonder if part of the problem is the use of the word "law." There are at least three different meanings that "law" can have in connection with the "law of tincture":
1. As in Newton’s laws of motion, or the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Those who think heraldry is a "science" are likely to interpret the "law of tincture" in these terms. Giving examples of the actual use of metal on metal to disprove the rule implies this perspective—if I were to roll 1200 billiard balls across a level pool table and 40 of them stopped inexplicably halfway across, I could plausibly claim to have disproved Newton’s first law. Does finding that 3% of a given sample of arms contain metal on metal similarly disprove the "law of tincture?"
2. As in the common law rule against perpetuities, or perhaps fraud. Critics of Heim who approach the matter from the perspective of British-style regulated heraldry would seem likely to interpret the "law of tincture" this way. Rights to arms that violate the rule are unenforceable under the "law of arms," just as a will that sets up a perpetuity is unenforceable under the law of estates. Or perhaps such arms are even punishable. For example, the English heralds who conducted the visitations were tasked with, among other things, correcting "false armory," the classic definition of false arms being those that violated the tincture law.
3. As in the "Laws of Cricket" or the "Laws of Football" (soccer). They are norms that are to be followed by those playing the heraldic game. The rules may allow for exceptions in some cases (Rule 13 of the "Rules of Golf": "The ball must be played as it lies, except as otherwise provided in the Rules.") Or rules may sometimes be broken, and sometimes not punished, without changing the game. The "Laws of Football" forbid anyone but the goalie from touching a live ball with his hands, but if you happen to touch the ball with your hands and the referee doesn’t see it, that doesn’t mean the game is no longer soccer. (On the other hand, if everyone on the field feels free to pick up the ball and carry it rather than kicking it, it has ceased to be soccer and becomes rugby or American football.)
I think the "tincture norm" is the third kind of "law." It’s supposed to be obeyed—and in the absence of a referee it’s up to the players to call their own fouls—but there are exceptions, and the occasional violation doesn’t make it "not heraldry."
