Heraldry: Customs, Rules, and Styles

by Carl-Alexander Von Volborth

Book Overview

HERALDRY - Customs, Rules Styles is a lavishly illustrated and extensively researched study of the complex rules and customs governing the international subject of hearldry. Scholarly in depth, yet... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0713709405
• ISBN13: 9780713709407
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Blandford
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best source available on systems of Continental heraldry

This unprepossessing volume includes a few glossy color plates, but it's contructed primarily around 1,200+ black-and-white renderings of arms, accompanied by cogent descriptive and explanatory text. The chapters walk the reader through the major elements of a blazon: The shield itself and its divisions and partitions, the charges, the helm and mantling, the crest and supporters, the various systems of differencing and cadency, and the marshalling of arms. But the author, a German-born artist of American citizenship living in Antwerp, has published a number of heraldic works in German, Dutch, and Danish, as well as English, and his interest in Continental armory continues here, with discussions of burgher-arms, both the titled and untitled nobility of numerous European countries, and the religious orders of chivalry in Malta, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Since most works on the subject in English show little interest in heraldry outside the British Isles, that inclusion alone makes this an important reference tool. But the author also points out the family relationships displayed in the similar arms of families with a joint history, the similarities between many municipal and regional arms based on historical parallels, and even the peculiarities of practice in the way helms are traditionally rendered in different countries. Much incidental information on both British and Continental families also appears. For instance, the arms of the noble Pacchioni family of Bologna includes a modified version of the chief in the Angevin arms because the armiger was a supporter of the King of Nables and Sicily, and the arms of Edward Irving of Kirkintilloch include a brisure of a second son of a third son of a second son. An excellent tool for both the genealogist and the heraldic artist.