How to Find Specific Charges
There are times where you might want to find examples of a certain charge in period heraldry; you may want to know whether a certain charge was used at all,…
A Few Examples of Sunflowers in 17th Century Armory
The earliest known heraldic sunflower was granted in 1614 by William Segar, Garter King of Arms, to Aurelia Florio, daughter of author John Florio: Azure, "an Heliotrope or Turnsol" Or…
Rainbows in Period Heraldry
Rainbows are a reasonably rare charge in pre-17th C armory overall (I’ve found none in French or Iberian armory, for example), but they show up in German armory regularly. Every…
Armorial Palettes
Because of the variation in the evenness of pigments and photo quality these are inherently approximate. My admittedly unscientific method was to sample pixels in a section of tincture until…
Iago’s Guide to Finding Period Armorials Online
Find collections of digitized manuscripts.A decent, if sometimes out-of-date, place to start is https://digitizedmedievalmanuscripts.org/, which is a meta-collection of institutions with digital manuscript collections. If the link to an institution…
Skulls in Period Heraldry
Human skulls (and death’s heads: skulls lacking the lower jaw) are very rare charges in period heraldry, but they do show up occasionally. The following is a rundown of all…