The Introduction

July 21, 2009 at 1:17 pm (Editorials) (Coat of arms, Heraldry)

Arms of Austia in around 1900 or 1915.

The world of heraldry seems rather big to many people. In many ways it is, with its own language, styles, and rules. The idea behind “snippets” is that they will allow people to learn in small chunks, without the “where the hell did my afternoon go?” feeling. I’ve written books on the subject before, in an attempt to revitalise the works of old (around 200 years ago) but I realised that I was going to fall into the same mistake of making heraldry seem antiquated. That’s the point of these posts. I hope you enjoy reading them. Here is one of the simpler, but still stunning works by Hugo Gerhard Ströhl, now in the public domain. I’m argentandsable, which are, for beginners, the heraldic terms for white and black respectively. More on that later. There’s going to be a mix of ideology, ideas, history, particular examples and language thrown all together.