On the Bartlett arms, I don’t know that anyone has traced either set back genealogically.  In that case (in my opinion) we have to credit Bartlett with knowing best what his own arms were, which is why the coat depicted on the document in his own hand is the one emblazoned on the roll.

Note that the fact that Vermont and Crozier ascribed the other coat (Sable three falconers’ gloves pendant Argent tasseled Or ) to the signer’s ancestor doesn’t mean that he actually used them or was even entitled to them.  Both sources fall squarely in the "trust but verify" category—at best.

The ACH&A also didn’t do itself any favors by "granting" arms to Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s VP, who was later indicted for past corruption while he was Governor of Maryland.  That, and Nixon’s resignation after Watergate, couldn’t have been helpful.

It’s just as well these ACH&A "grants" didn’t receive any great public notice before the "grantees" crashed & burned—not just for that "college" but for American heraldry in general.  How many of us would look at Nixon & Agnew and say, "How do I get me some of that?"

This may well be unfair to the folks who set up the ACH&A, who I assume operated with the best of intentions and couldn’t have foreseen their grantees’ downfall; but whoever said life and history are always fair?

Sorry if I seem grumpy; went to the Giants - Dodgers game this afternoon—Dodgers lost 4 to 0, their third shut out in a row.  Life ain’t always fair…

It sounds like the arms given by the ACH&A were bad luck. Well, I wonder if their productions were at least good. The LBJ arms don’t look bad, even though it seems there were some technical discrepancies between the blazon and the art.

I’ve looked at the registrations displayed on the ACH website and I think some designs are definitely better than others. I suspect a challenge for any heraldic artist who is designing arms would probably be in reigning in the numerous and unworkable whims of the perspective arms bearer. It looks like sometimes there are compromises; but sometimes the client probably "wins", resulting in the busy hodgepodges. In those cases, as a viewer, my eyes don’t know where to focus on the shield and my brain tends to dismiss the whole image as confusing. The good, simpler ones are handsome though.

Not that my opinion matters and I’m not trying to sound like a sycophant, but the arms displayed on the Members’ Armorial on the AHS site are by far the best I’ve seen compared to lists of arms on some other sites. My hat goes off—it’s definitely a precise and disciplined genre of art to be respected.

A lot of clutter can probably be attributed to the client’s tastes, but there are plenty of people who undertake to design arms for others (some for money, and some of them real official heralds) without any artistic sense of composition, balance, proportion, or color. You don’t have to be a brilliant drawer or painter to be a good heraldic designer, but you do have to have the ability to distinguish a graceful, elegant design from a cluttered, awkward one.

There are lots of folks out there who think having memorized the rules in Boutell and Fox-Davies qualifies them to give advice on heraldic design. It doesn’t.  They’re to blame for a lot of the cluttered mess out there.

I’m not sure we should impute the demise of Agnew and Nixon to having gotten arms from the ACH&A or the demise of the ACH&A to having granted the arms.  The coincidence of their respective trajectories is not evidence of cause and effect.

Maybe the bad luck was in the fact that they were actually caught! I was just being silly when I suggested that anyway. I promise I’m not so superstitious.

Amen! to Joe’s last posting above.

One advantage we have here, that some other places or an individual working on his own don’t, is the active ongoing participation of a fairly (and some highly) knowledgeable and diverse group in the design process.  The diversity of backgrounds and personal preferences on a good day - or month or occasionally years - can elicit a broader range of ideas and constructive criticism, and helps avoid the risk of halfbaked groupthink or premature settling on an heraldic Ms. Right Now.

Shifting gears, Jeff’s reference in msg #12 above to a Mr. Moorshead’s account of his experience with the CHA (nothing about canting) triggered my curiosity, so I looked up that entry in the CHA online register.  A beautiful design, with no hint of a cant.

While I was on the M page I took a look at the other entries.  All were nice designs, and the emblazonments were up to the CHA’s high artistic standards.  But in at least nine cases among the M’s, there were canting charges, some in English (including one moorcock for a Moore), some in French, and even one in Polish!  Of course there were many others which weren’t canting.

While I have no personal knowledge of the Moorshead case, I suspect the immediately obvious canting charge was neither appropriate in a diverse multiracial nation, nor pertinent to a Canadian whose Norwegian roots were noted in the entry.

Michael F. McCartney;104357 wrote:

While I have no personal knowledge of the Moorshead case, I suspect the immediately obvious canting charge was neither appropriate in a diverse multiracial nation, nor pertinent to a Canadian whose Norwegian roots were noted in the entry.

Well, I’m a little confused about the last part; the whole essence and nature of canting charges is and would be that if they were relevant to the national origin or profession of the grantee it would be mere coincidence; the two categories of charges are usually totally distinct.

Further, I’m not sure that there would be anything inappropriate about the charge (but keep in mind my own crest).

I agree with Daniel that Norwegian ancestry does not invalidate the use of a Moor’s head as a canting form of arms. To my surprise, it even works in Norwegian, according to an online translator—a Moor being "maurer" and head being "hode."  Even if it didn’t, however, to say that it would be inappropriate because Mr. Moorshead is of Norwegian ancestry is to say that people of English or Scottish descent should not use charges that make puns in French, Italian, or Latin.

The political correctness issue is another matter, but frankly, if Mr. Moorshead had been willing to put up with the flak he would have encountered these days (see Pope Benedict XVI), a canting coat would have been preferable in symbolic terms to the arms actually granted, in my opinion. "Gules a maple leaf between three mullets Argent" is pleasant enough in the abstract, but it symbolizes nothing other than Canadian citizenship and U.S. ancestry. It’s more graceful than the usual lucky charms design, but imagine how we would deride "Argent an eagle displayed Azure between three shamrocks Vert" to show that a person is an American of Irish extraction.

On the other hand, note that the only coat in Burke’s General Armory for the cognate name in British heraldry has nothing to do with either moors or Moors. Charles Morehead of Herbertshire, Stirlingshire, matriculated "Argent on a bend Azure three acorns Or, in sinister chief a heart enclosed in a fetterlock proper" in Lyon Register in 1768. The only cant is the locked heart for Lockhart, his wife’s family.

So as obvious as the cant might be, it doesn’t seem to have been used, at least not much. Showing that canting isn’t everything.

Joseph McMillan;104362 wrote:

On the other hand, note that the only coat in Burke’s General Armory for the cognate name in British heraldry has nothing to do with either moors or Moors. Charles Morehead of Herbertshire, Stirlingshire, matriculated "Argent on a bend Azure three acorns Or, in sinister chief a heart enclosed in a fetterlock proper" in Lyon Register in 1768. The only cant is the locked heart for Lockhart, his wife’s family.

 

Joseph,

Morehead is also a form of Muirhead.  In the example you cite, above, it appears that Mr. Charles Morehead matriculated arms which are differenced [by the locked heart] from the base arms of Muirhead.

The link, below, is a page featuring some Muirhead arms:

http://www.motherbedford.com/Muirhead718.htm

I think that for a non-Scottish Moorshead, a canting shield or crest would be an excellent choice.  It can’t be any worse than the crest of the Chief of the MacLellans.

David

Re: Mr. Moorshead’s Canadian grant - first, it’s a maple tree, explained in the symbolism section of the online CHA register entry as the tree of life, not just a maple leaf (which I agree would have been more than a bit generic).

Second, as to political correctness—not just whether the grantee would be willing to put up with the flak,  the only relevant concern if unilaterally assumed; but whether the CHA, acting for the Governor General, would be willing to give it their official imprimatur.  In their shoes, at least in a new design, I surely wouldn’t!

Maybe a Moorcock’s or Blackbird’s or some other critter’s head Sable, or semee of small pellets signifying teenage acne; but not a human head Sable that might offend on either ethnic or religious grounds.  One of our guiding principles is that any nation’s heraldry should reflect, and be constrained by, the values and norms of the larger society; no herald should include orvapprove a charge in a new design that,  if posted in a police locker room, would get the cops suspended or fired.  Just as some once-common words are now off-limits, so IMO are some once-acceptable heraldic charges.  Would we applaud new arms featuring the once-acceptable fylfot?  or a blazon referring to a torch by the once-acceptable term faggots enflamed?  Not in my book!  If you wouldn’t post it in your office and invite your HR and EEO folk to come take a look, it has no place in modern heraldry.

(On a more personal note—so others may not share my reaction—a recent thread on Facebook about a Scandinavian or Baltic medieval merchant guild whose name translated & used in the posting in English as Black Head Society, made me twinge each time the term appeared.  Literal translation into a language the writer barely reads and writes, with little or no cultural understanding, can be upsetting.)

Sorry if too much personal emotion, but there are considerations that trump heraldic history.

As to appropriateness of cants from other cultures or languages than one’s own—generally (though not in this case, per previous paragraphs) any cant that works is OK; but the more remote from one’s own culture, the less appealing it may be, and the more likely one will eschew the cant and look for something more personally relevant.

Michael F. McCartney;104370 wrote:

Re: Mr. Moorshead’s Canadian grant - first, it’s a maple tree, explained in the symbolism section of the online CHA register entry as the tree of life, not just a maple leaf (which I agree would have been more than a bit generic).

Second, as to political correctness—not just whether the grantee would be willing to put up with the flak,  the only relevant concern if unilaterally assumed; but whether the CHA, acting for the Governor General, would be willing to give it their official imprimatur.  In their shoes, at least in a new design, I surely wouldn’t!

 

Maybe a Moorcock’s or Blackbird’s or some other critter’s head Sable, or semee of small pellets signifying teenage acne; but not a human head Sable that might offend on either ethnic or religious grounds.  One of our guiding principles is that any nation’s heraldry should reflect, and be constrained by, the values and norms of the larger society; no herald should include orvapprove a charge in a new design that,  if posted in a police locker room, would get the cops suspended or fired.  Just as some once-common words are now off-limits, so IMO are some once-acceptable heraldic charges.  Would we applaud new arms featuring the once-acceptable fylfot?  or a blazon referring to a torch by the once-acceptable term faggots enflamed?  Not in my book!  If you wouldn’t post it in your office and invite your HR and EEO folk to come take a look, it has no place in modern heraldry.

 

(On a more personal note—so others may not share my reaction—a recent thread on Facebook about a Scandinavian or Baltic medieval merchant guild whose name translated & used in the posting in English as Black Head Society, made me twinge each time the term appeared.  Literal translation into a language the writer barely reads and writes, with little or no cultural understanding, can be upsetting.)

 

Sorry if too much personal emotion, but there are considerations that trump heraldic history.

 

As to appropriateness of cants from other cultures or languages than one’s own—generally (though not in this case, per previous paragraphs) any cant that works is OK; but the more remote from one’s own culture, the less appealing it may be, and the more likely one will eschew the cant and look for something more personally relevant.

Although I understand your point of view, there are certain parts of it I could not disagree with more strongly.

I have a demi-Moor crest of recent vintage and I must say that while some uses of Moors or Moos’ heads are tinged with racism as so much of heraldic symbolism they are profoundly complex and contextual.  But there is a more important error you are making here.  It is a more fundamental principle than any you cite that, except when the name of the charge itself specifies, any charge can be any tincture.  A human head that is sable may not be a Moor and a Moor’s head is not necessarily sable or proper.  It is the outline that makes the charge, not the tincture.  We know of cucumbers argent and lions purpure and the Moor and his head are no exception.

It is a mistake to equate the language of blazon with anything in the world external to it, and all this type of argument is doing is pandering to and encouraging ignorance, rather than encouraging the knowledge of heraldry.  One cannot put clothes in a closet, one cannot write with a pencil, and despite the ambiguous slang usages of the term, at least one of which is offensive, for us, "faggots" remain no more than sticks.  For the sake of clarity, the prevention of ambiguity and the preservation of ancient coats the terminology of blazon should be preserved.  Furthermore it might be pointed out that only very primitive torches are composed of faggots enflamed.

There is nothing wrong with emotion, even strong emotion, but certain types of emotion can blind one to the correct understanding of sciences such as heraldry.

Obvious major difference of opinion, not only re: appropriateness of a particular charge, but of priorities.

My objection to a Moor’s head sable is not limited to the term Moor, but extends to the use of a human head Sable by those whose own head is a different color.  The fact that heraldic lions or birds or fish can be any color or metal is to me not relevant because real world lions or birds or fish aren’t likely to be offended.  Depictions suggestive of various human racial or ethnic or religious groups, especially those with a history of discrimination, by those not members of the relevant group, are a different matter.

Which leads us to priorities.  One of the core principles in our Guidelines is that heraldry doesn’t operate in a vacuum; it should be merely (using that term on purpose) a subset of the values and norms of the broader society, and reflect those values and norms if it is to have any value other than fantasy escapism. Even where certain heraldic practices were acceptable or even mandatory in other places and times, if they are not compatible with the norms and values of American society, they don’t belong in our heraldry - or at best, aren’t "best practices.".  (My wording, the Guidelines are more diplomatic but same thrust.)

American values aren’t static - what was once commonly tolerated or even acceptable may no longer be.  This is especially true in the areas of race, religion, and ethnicity.  We may not always personally agree that this is fair, but e.g. racial, religious, and ethnic humor and stereotypes used by others are no longer viewed as "best practices" in daily life; and consequently cannot be "best practices" in our heraldry.  In the term "American heraldry" the first priority is the first word.

Thus endeth the sermon - or maybe just this round

Two observations on rereading my rant—another American value is freedom of speech, which is reflected in the Guidelines by the term "best practices" rather than "thou shalt not" even when some (me anyway) might prefer something stronger.  That same value makes it possible for us to debate and express our own differing views on particular points, as we’re doing here.  No disrespect intended, just deep difference of opinions.

Second observation is that we touched on similar concerns last month re: what is or isn’t OK re: use of indigenous (Native American) imagery by those not ourselves of that background, though that thread soon meandered down other paths.

Michael F. McCartney;104396 wrote:

Obvious major difference of opinion, not only re: appropriateness of a particular charge, but of priorities.

My objection to a Moor’s head sable is not limited to the term Moor, but extends to the use of a human head Sable by those whose own head is a different color.  The fact that heraldic lions or birds or fish can be any color or metal is to me not relevant because real world lions or birds or fish aren’t likely to be offended.  Depictions suggestive of various human racial or ethnic or religious groups, especially those with a history of discrimination, by those not members of the relevant group, are a different matter.

 

Which leads us to priorities.  One of the core principles in our Guidelines is that heraldry doesn’t operate in a vacuum; it should be merely (using that term on purpose) a subset of the values and norms of the broader society, and reflect those values and norms if it is to have any value other than fantasy escapism. Even where certain heraldic practices were acceptable or even mandatory in other places and times, if they are not compatible with the norms and values of American society, they don’t belong in our heraldry - or at best, aren’t "best practices.".  (My wording, the Guidelines are more diplomatic but same thrust.)

 

American values aren’t static - what was once commonly tolerated or even acceptable may no longer be.  This is especially true in the areas of race, religion, and ethnicity.  We may not always personally agree that this is fair, but e.g. racial, religious, and ethnic humor and stereotypes used by others are no longer viewed as "best practices" in daily life; and consequently cannot be "best practices" in our heraldry.  In the term "American heraldry" the first priority is the first word.

 

Thus endeth the sermon - or maybe just this round

Of course, there are examples of Moors’ heads that are instead blazoned Africans’ heads or Negroes’ heads, and perhaps you would argue that this would be the better approach, and I wouldn’t strongly dispute this.  There are several significant problems with what you wrote, however.  The notion that the Moor’s head (or indeed any part of his body) is racist, or might be found to be objectionable, per se, is nothing but preposterous hogwash.  The Moor’s head might be a positive depiction of or allusion to a saint, relatives, founders of a town, students of a university and so forth.  I might not have expressed myself clearly enough, but while in some cases the head might be used in a racist way, one can easily conceive of other contexts, such as the arms of a recent Pope, in which nothing racist was intended, or can indeed reasonably be inferred.  And if inferences are made out of an ignorance of heraldry the solution is not to attempt to nourish, to bring up, to encourage such ignorance, but to educate.  The colours or metals of beasts, fish and birds other than proper, which you bring up in a seemingly light way, glosses over an important point that is indeed parallel – no offence to the lion is intended by making him ermine or purpure, to the dolphin by making him or—quite the opposite, and it is beyond me why it is necessarily true that depicting a human head sable would be offensive.  (One can think of multiple and very significant reasons having nothing to do with any human race why human heads should be shown in different tinctures, beyond the simple necessity of differentiation.  E.g., the ufologist, the science-fiction writer or director of cinematic space operas, for example, might clearly be benefitted from bearing a chevron between three human heads cendrée, vert or purpure, as an easy and evocative way of suggesting Neptunians or whatever other spacemen.)  Again, the inspiration and context are overwhelmingly significant here.  As far as depictions by members not of the relevant group, which member is to be taken as the member?  Governors General, Kings of Arms, heralds and armigers can be and in most cases have been members of every conceivable racial, religious and ethnic group.  And through several methods, involving cantons voided or otherwise, or even marks of cadency, the racial, religious or ethnic group of the bearer might change down the generations.

Further, in terms of ethnic groups, you are aware that one cannot obtain an Englishman’s head but cutting the head off an English man, a Saxon’s head by beheading a Saxon, right?  These are codes for hair and beard colour (in a layman’s sense) and more akin to metaphors or indeed abstractions than anything found on the streets of London or Germany.

Heraldry operating in a vacuum is ambiguous – the inspiration for designs and charges obviously, in most cases, derive from something external to heraldry, whether the bearer’s career, a pun on his name, or something about his affinities, and I would be crazy if I disputed this.  What I meant was that the practices and principles of blazon and the rules of heraldry, for very sensible reasons to which I have alluded, should not be altered to mollify the enthusiasts of political correctness.  To alter blazon for these purposes is nonsense which only potentially leads to a lack of clarity, correctness and precision and can cause confusion about how to accurately paint ancient arms.  The possibility of heraldry becoming “fantasy escapism” is truly baffling – as with any science, it operates outside things extrinsic to itself.  Where is the concern that if we don’t change biology to keep up with changing American values, biology will become only a form of “fantasy escapism”?

What I was writing needs to be analyzed not just in terms of “American heraldry”; it was intended to apply to heraldry worldwide and even in space, in general.