The Arms of Judah Maccabee
In the 15th and 16th centuries, it was common for armorials to include the arms of notable people from around the known world both past and present. The fact that…
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…
New Additions: 1601-1650
After my last update I had a request to add a new page that would hold all the armorial sources I've found that don't fit within the 16th C and…
May 2023 Armorials Update
I just finished adding 22 new sources to my lists of armorials, bringing the total up to 654. The full list is at the end of the post, but here…
Small Update
There haven't been many updates recently, but I do keep looking for new sources to add to the Armorials collection (I've dug up enough that there's a bit of diminishing…
June 2022 Armorials Update
From Wappenbuch des André de Rineck, 1473 German (Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. 3336) 31 new additions since last month's update, bringing the total to 632. Great Britain and Ireland…
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…
May 2022 Armorials Update
Wow, it's been a year since my last update! Bunch of new stuff added today from a variety of heraldic regions: Great Britain and Ireland (8) Barddoniaeth Lewys Glyn Cothi,…
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…