SCA Field Only Armoury Project, Part Seven

Part Seven, devices fifty-eight through sixty six of one hundred and sixty five! Progress is taking place, and I’m actually well ahead of that in actual emblazoning as I didn’t start posting this project here until I was at these devices finally being published today, so I have some lead time in case of delays.

Today is all about variations on the theme of “per bend”. We’ve got the always-popular “per bend rayonny”, including Cathyn Fitzgerald’s striking black and red “Per bend rayonny gules and sable” device.

This was also the stretch of this project where I changed how I show ermine, on advice from several people in the Facebook Baby Heralds of the SCA group. Top left we have Abel Parnell Le Guide’s excellent “Per bend pean and erminois” (I unashamedly love this tincture combination…) and Thomas of Waverly’s “Per bend potenty vert and ermine”, featuring the excellent and under-used potenty line, both in the previous style with lots of smaller ermine spots.

Rightmost on the second line we have the first appearance of my modified ermine emblazoning, with fewer much larger ermine spots in Ginevra Maddalena di Tomaso Volpe’s “Per bend sinister argent ermined vert and purpure.” Splendid name and nice arms, although I’m not sure if the name is Italian or Spanish, to be honest.

(Skip all of the following unless you’re into deeply geeky Society-specific rules of heraldry. Nice pictures of devices will return soon!)

The bottom row also nicely illustrates one of the interesting things about field-only armoury under the SCA’s heraldic rules. Normally a device has to have two minor (Distinct Changes/DCs) or one major (Substantial Change/SC) change from an existing device to be registerable by Laurel Sovereign of Arms. A change in line of division is not normally considered an SC, just a DC.

That said, how can Peter Trevor’s “Per bend sinister bevilled azure and argent” (bottom right) have been allowed in October 2003 when Sabine Berard’s awesomely simple “Per bend sinister azure and argent” had just been registered in May 2002?

Field-primary armoury runs under slightly different rules than armoury with an actual primary charge, that’s how.

SENA A5F says, in part: F. Standards for Difference through a Single Substantial Change of Field for Field-Primary Armory: This rule applies only to field-primary armory; that is, armory which has no primary charge group, including armory with peripheral ordinaries, whether they are charged or uncharged. Field-primary armory is discussed further in Appendix I. A new field-primary submission does not conflict with a piece of protected field-primary armory if the two fields have a substantially different partition or tincture as defined below.

…and then way down at the bottom of SENA Appendix M there’s categories of different lines of partition. Bevilled is an entirely distinct category, so our two otherwise similar sets of armoury are clear and OK.

So leaving a primary charge or ordinary off your device gets you some breaks when conflict-checking that you wouldn’t ordinarily get. Ain’t that awesome?

(I’m reasonably certain that all of the preceeding discussion of SENA and the application thereof is accurate and sensible, but this is all new to me too so it might be gibberish. If it is gibberish, please do correct me below and I’ll update or remove gibberish as required!)