Tag: heraldry

UPDATE: The most recent version of my Field Only Armoury Project is now the June 2024 version.

Back in 2017 I started making digital images (emblazons) of all the Field Only heraldic devices and badges in the SCA’s registry, the Ordinary & Armorial. I published it in parts here, then updated the whole thing in 2018 and again in July 2019.

This April 2020 update includes everything up to the January 2020 Letter of Acceptances and Returns, published about two weeks ago. There’s fifteen new entries bringing us to 229 Field Only devices and badges. This includes both devices and badges, but does not include the Field Only real-world armory protected by the SCA’s heraldic rules.

The April 2020 update is available here as a 9 page PDF (5.6Mb) designed to be printed on Ledger-sized (11″ x 17″) paper, although it will scale down nicely to print on A4/Letter or Legal size paper.

For those who like to see the messy end of the sausage making, I’ve also got my organizing Excel sheet and master SVG file available together in a ZIP file (316.8 kB).

I know some people use this project for quick visual conflict checking of new heraldic submissions, and I’ve heard of heralds printing it out to give new SCA members some idea of what different heraldry can look like, but I’d really like to hear from folks who use this project – drop a comment below telling me how you’re using it and where in our Known World you are.

Published in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with SCA events cancelled worldwide, and our usual lives disrupted and at more risk than usual, I really would like to hear from people! Stay safe, sane, and well, everyone.

Yours in Heraldic Service,
Vémundr Syvursson
Pily barry argent and azure

UPDATE: The most recent version of my Field Only Armoury Project is now the June 2024 version.

Back in the fall of 2017 I started making digital images (“emblazons”) of all then-registered Field Only devices and badges in the SCA’s giant registry of names, devices, and badges, the Ordinary & Armorial. The first version was published one page at a time here, then a compiled and updated single-PDF version was published in April 2018. I have done a couple of rounds up updates since but never gotten around to actually publishing them until now.

This version is a 9 page PDF with 214 devices and badges included. It is up to date as of June 2019, so it includes everything up to the March 2019 Letters of Acceptance & Returns, the most recent at this time. I have (still) not included the 27 real-world Field Only devices protected by the SCA as “Important non-SCA arms”. It is sized to print at 11″ wide by 17″ long – ledger sized paper, by North American paper standards. It’ll also scale down legibly onto legal or even letter/A4 size paper.

The devices are sorted alphabetically by blazon, so we start with “Argent masoned azure.” and end 200+ devices later with “Vert scaly Or.”

Among the dozen or so new devices registered since the April 2018 first compiled publication is my very own SCA devices, “Pily barry argent and azure”, because after all this work with Field Only stuff did anyone think I was going to register anything other than an FO device as my personal SCA arms?

Sources are listed in my April 2018 post and do not need updating for now.

Field Only Armoury Project – July 2019 – PDF – 905Kb

As with my primary sources and the previous version, I am releasing this document under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License. Basically that means this file can be printed, shared, copied, and re-used provided you maintain credit to me as creator, and share your version under a compatible licence. (or license, if you’re a American who insists on spelling it that way. I won’t judge, not for that.)

Source SVG & Excel Data File

Field Only Armory Project – Everything – 11×17 Poster – July 2019 – this ZIP file has the 3.2Mb source SVG I used to create the main PDF above. If all you want to do is look at the collection or print it, just grab the SVG, but if you want to see how some of the devices were assembled in Inkscape, feel free to grab the SVG.

FieldOnlyProject-July2019-Excel – I’ve also finally published the current copy of the simple Excel sheet I use to track this project. Note that the Badges tab is obsolete, all up-to-date badge info is integrated into the main Devices tab now. For the initial data dump I had a complicated cut-and-paste/find-and-replace sequence with a text file to produce a CSV and then imported that into Excel; these days as I’m usually only adding two or three entries at a time I just plug them in manually and re-sort inside Excel.

Both of these source files are under the same Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License as the main project PDF.

Send Me Feedback!

If you use anything of this project at a Herald’s Point or heraldic consulting table, or even just for some heraldic decoration on your walls, send me a photo.

Corrections, suggestions, and such also appreciated. I’m not sure when the next update will be, but “probably annually, roughly” seems like a good bet!

Yours in Service,
Vémundr Syvursson
An Tir
9 July A.S. 54/2019 CE
mka Brian Burger

UPDATE: The most recent version of my Field Only Armoury Project is now the June 2024 version.

It’s finished! (at least for now…)

After doing the badges, I caught up on the five or so new devices that had been registered since early October 2017 when I’d done my data pull of devices and badges for this crazy project, as well as a couple of errors that awesome readers had found for me.

While sorting those into their proper places I decided to integrate the badges and then republish the entire PDF.

The sort is alphabetically by blazon starting with “Argent masoned azure” and ending 203 devices and badges later with “Vert scaly Or.”. This is every Field Only device and badge registered to an SCA member or territory as of the end of December 2017 (AS 52). It does not include the real-world devices that the SCA’s College of Heralds protects from conflict as being noteworthy.

The entire collection fits on 8 pages, sized to print at 11″ wide by 17″ long – ledger sized paper, by North American paper standards. It’ll also scale down legibly onto legal or even letter/A4 size paper.

Field Only Armoury – April 2018 Final – PDF – 8 pages – ~850KB)

As with my two primary sources (see below) I am releasing this document under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.

Sources

I have been remiss in not mentioning the sources of most of the graphics I’ve used throughout this project.

Traceable Heraldic Art is Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin’s spectacular and ever-expanding project, filled with heraldic art assets in a variety of formats including SVG.

The Viking Answer Lady SVG Graphics for Heralds collection is also incredibly useful, and due to the generous licensing on the collection, it’s increasingly being incorporated into the Traceable Heraldic Art collection as well.

The main text at the bottom of each page is from the IM Fell font family via Dafont, a modern re-creation of a 17th C English font family by Igino Marini.

Over on Facebook the Baby Heralds of the SCA group has been a huge help, and I have to thank Mathghamhain for taking a close and encouraging interest in this project right from the start. Some of the work I’ve done on this project might start appearing at his Traceable Heraldic Art pages to fill a few of the gaps in his collection.

My Source SVG

If you just want to look at or print this project’s emblazoned devices and badges, grab the PDF linked to above.

If you want to use my work for further heraldic projects, however, I’m finally making the source SVG available. It’s been developed entirely in Inkscape on both Windows and Ubuntu Linux PCs.

Field Only Armory Project – Everything – 11×17 Poster – April 2018 – SVG file inside a ZIP archive. The SVG is 2.9Mb when unzipped.

Send Me Feedback!

If you use anything of this project at a Herald’s Point or heraldic consulting table, or even just for some heraldic decoration on your walls, send me a photo.

Corrections, suggestions, and such also appreciated. The plan going forward, now that this project is “finished”, is to update it maybe once a year as new Field Only registrations appear in the SCA O&A, or as errors are discovered.

Yours in Service,
Vémundr Syvursson
An Tir
2 April A.S. 52/2018
mka Brian Burger