The International Association of Amateur Heralds

The arms of Ronald Rennie which Vincent Beswick-Escanlar posted on the World Radio Day thread, reminded me of another design, namely the arms of Dr Clive Cheesman, the Richmond Herald at the College of Arms. The comparison is interesting.



Dexter : Clive Cheesman's arms, from the College of Arms in 1999. The shield is blazoned as "Per pale and per pall Argent and Sable". The meaning of the design is said to be "esoteric", but the segments of the shield "could remind one of wedges of cheese".

Sinister : Ronald Rennie's arms, from the Canadian Heraldry Authority in 2007. The shield is blazoned as "Per pale Azure and Argent, a triangular chief counterchanged". The tinctures represent "the entire visible electromagnetic spectrum" (Argent) and "its most energetic part" (Azure), "reflecting the general and the particular together". Here, the division of the shield represents the conventional circuit symbol for an antenna.

So, the same basic design, blazoned in two different ways, by two different heraldry authorities, to represent two completely different ideas.

"A triangular chief"

Trust the CHA to come up with something "innovative".

Another instructive pair of similar arms, in this case demonstrating the ability of the same design element(s) to represent completely different ideas.

(FWIW my first thought was an inverted peace symbol from the last century - maybe a peacenik who was drafted... )

The Canadian term "triangular chief" is IMO a useful term - it clearly and succinctly describes the intended shape better than "a pile" or "a chrvron inverted"", each followed by various confusing modifiers to pin down just how it isn't really either one.

I think the triangular chief should be smaller, in the picture it goes nearly to the centre point and chiefs do not go that low.

Ton - good point, maybe it's not as good a descriptive term as I first thought. (Though FWIW the surface area - square inches or whatever - is roughly equal to that of a chief )

So the College of Arms blazon of per pale and per pall - while perhaps not ideal - is apparent the better of the two.

You could possibly also blazon it with some variation of gyronny.

??

You could possibly also blazon it with some variation of gyronny.

I think I see what you mean. Here we have two triangles; gyrons are triangles; therefore these triangles could be called gyrons. Sadly no. To quote Boutell (p 55): The gyron is the lower half of a canton or quarter when divided by a line from the dexter chief to the fess point. A sinister gyron is also found. Gyronny (Boutell p33) is a field divided into a number of gyrons radiating from a middle point.

Neither the Cheeseman nor the Rennie arms contain gyrons, though the emblazonment of Rennie does (erroneously) take the triangles to the mid-point.

I was thinking of something like per fess gyronny and per pale. In which case, there would be 4 gryons but two would disappear because they merge with the divided field below the fess. I don't think that is good practice to blazon like that, but possible.