Personal opinions

These are my personal opinions on various heraldic matters. I'm still young, so they might change in the future. I might write longer articles on these when I find the time and volition.

Tinctures

• There are seven heraldic tinctures, not counting the furs: the metals gold and silver, and the colors red, blue, black, green, and purpure.
• "Proper" should be used sparingly (e.g. for human skin, peacock feathers), and never to "cheat" the rules of tincture.
• Non-standard tinctures should be avoided, since they can be confused with the major tinctures. For instance, in Swedish books I've seen shades of purpure that are close to what English heraldists would call "murrey".
• Purpure is a first-class citizen of the group of heraldic tinctures. (This view is in contrast with many Germanic heraldists, who see purpure as a secondary or disallowed tincture.)

Tincture clashes

There are, in practice, two rules of tincture:

1. The greater rule of tincture: Metal may not be put on metal, nor color on color.
   Exceptions (non-exhaustive list):
   • A creature's armaments.
   • A bordure, when used for differencing.
   • A compound figure with minor tincture clash (e.g. in blue a golden lion holding a red book).
2. The lesser (i.e. less firm) rule of tincture: Metal should not be put next to metal, nor color next to color.
   Exceptions other than the above (non-exhaustive list):
   • Cases where a tincture clash is unavoidable (e.g. division per pall).
   • Maybe divisions per fess/pale/bend/bend-sinister, though this is dubious.

Blazon

I'm interested in creating a new lingua franca for heraldry, that is closer to plain English than the fancy archaic language commonly used by English heraldists, without sacrificing terms genuinely useful for blazonry. For instance, "gules a fess or" would become "in red a golden fess".

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This page was last updated 2018-03-05.