Heraldry for Craftsmen & Designers

In Short

This technical guide traces the historical development of heraldic design from its medieval origins to its post-Restoration decline. By examining ancient seals, stained glass, carved monuments, and embroidered vestments, W. H. St. John Hope demonstrates how early artists skillfully filled spaces with bold charges, balanced fields, and expressive crests. He contrasts this living medieval tradition with the decadent, over-complicated conventions of modern heraldry, offering craftsmen and designers a rigorous historical framework to restore utility, beauty, and proper proportion to armorial art.

The Story

The narrative follows the evolution of heraldry as a practical visual art, beginning with its foundational principles and tracing its gradual departure from early functional design toward modern decline. In its original form, heraldry operates as a straightforward system for identifying individuals and families using geometric ordinaries, animals, plants, and symbolic charges. Early craftsmen designed shields, banners, and crests with direct purpose, prioritizing clarity and complete coverage of the surface. A gold star upon silver violates the fundamental rule of color contrast, whereas a silver star upon a blue field or a red rose upon gold ensures immediate visual legibility. Early artists adapted their designs naturally to different mediums, curving shields for monumental effigies, employing subtle concavities, or using decorative diapering to relieve flat surfaces without creating false charges.

As the art develops through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, heraldic display expands into complex forms. Crests originally designed as three-dimensional objects modeled in leather or wood to be worn atop helms are paired with elaborate mantlings, supporters, and badges. Banners and standards are structured around strict spatial constraints to maintain clear proportions between field and charge. Husbands and wives combine their arms through impalement or quartering, while noblemen display official livery collars, such as the Lancastrian SS or Yorkist Suns and Roses, alongside personal rebuses and mottos.

However, this golden age gives way to a long period of stylistic degradation starting in the Tudor era and worsening through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Official heralds and kings-of-arms abandon the logical, physical realities of the craft. They introduce impossible pictorial scenes as crests, grant armorial bearings to impersonal corporate bodies, and force heraldic banners into excessively wide, horizontal proportions that distort the figures drawn upon them. Helms are turned in arbitrary directions to signify arbitrary grades of rank, untethered from how a crest actually sits on a helmet.

The progression closes with a call to discard these modern absurdities in favor of medieval precedents. By examining surviving historical artifacts—such as the stall-plates at Windsor, early town seals, and medieval tomb effigies—craftsmen can reclaim the structural balance, decorative richness, and direct simplicity that made early heraldry a vibrant, living art.

How It Unfolds

The foundation of armorial design Early armorial art relies on clear rules of color contrast and spatial arrangement to display birds, beasts, ordinaries, and flowers upon shields. Master craftsmen spread charges to fill every available space on flat, curved, or ridged fields.

Expansion into crests and accessories As heraldry matures, physical three-dimensional crests made of leather or wood are set atop helmets, accompanied by mantlings, badges, and animal supporters. These elements appear on seals, tomb effigies, and stained glass windows, maintaining structural balance with the central shield.

Marshalling and decorative application The combination of family arms through impalement and quartering extends heraldic design into everyday objects, including embroidered vestments, hall hangings, and livery collars. Personal mottos, rebuses, and coronets refine the visual identity of nobles and civic officials.

The shift toward decadent rules During the Tudor period and subsequent centuries, official heralds introduce overly complex grants, pictorial crests, and rigid helmet orientations that ignore physical construction. Banners are stretched into awkward horizontal proportions, leading to a general degradation of heraldic taste and drawing.

Reclaiming medieval craftsmanship By studying authentic medieval examples, modern designers can reject artificial conventions and restore structural beauty to heraldic work. Recent corrections to noble stall-plates and royal banners demonstrate that traditional proportions produce superior artistic decoration.

The People

Medieval Craftsmen and Glass Painters The unnamed artists of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries who created seals, stained glass, monumental effigies, and embroideries. They seek to fill empty visual spaces with bold, legible designs that balance charges against fields. By utilizing techniques like surface diapering and ridging, they establish a high standard of functional beauty that lasts until official regulations stifle the craft.

The Kings-of-Arms and Official Heralds The institutional authorities from the Tudor era through the nineteenth century who assume control over heraldic grants. Driven by a desire to codify rank through complex rules, they grant crests to corporate bodies and design unworkable pictorial scenes. Their bureaucratic additions restrict heraldic art and cause the long-term degradation of traditional armorial design.

Modern Craftsmen and Designers The intended audience of artists, carvers, and illuminators who face the challenge of navigating modern heraldic fallacies. Guided by historical analysis, they work to reject unnatural helmet placements and distorted banner dimensions, applying medieval principles to modern architectural, decorative, and heraldic commissions.

In Its Own Voice

"A lion or an eagle, for instance, will have the limbs and extremities so spread out as to fill every available space; and the same will be found in every group or combination of objects capable of arrangement or extension."

— Hope explains how medieval artists systematically prioritized complete visual coverage over rigid, mechanical reproduction when placing charges on a shield.

"Such impossible crests as the pictorial scenes and other absurdities granted by the kings-of-arms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even back to Elizabethan days, would not have been thought of at an earlier period, when heraldry was a living art."

— The author criticizes the decline in heraldic standards that occurred when official grant-makers lost touch with the physical, three-dimensional origins of helm design.

"The medieval passion for striped, paned, or checkered hangings might also be revived with advantage, and the mention in 1391 of 'a bed of white and murrey unded' shows that waved lines were as tolerable as straight."

— In discussing heraldic embroideries, Hope highlights how historical patterns can inspire contemporary interior and decorative arts.

What It's Really About

The work argues that heraldry is fundamentally a visual craft rooted in physical utility rather than a collection of pedantic, arbitrary rules invented by modern heralds. Beneath its detailed analysis of shields, crests, and banners lies a critique of how institutional bureaucracy distorts artistic traditions. Early heraldry succeeded because carvers, glass painters, and seal-engravers understood scale, proportion, and materials. When heraldry became decoupled from actual armor, banners, and physical manufacturing, it degenerated into weak drawing and cluttered designs. The book insists that genuine tradition is preserved not by blindly obeying modern administrative conventions, but by recovering the core aesthetic principles—contrast, filling the field, and structural honesty—that made medieval design clear and effective.

Why Read It Today

This text serves as a thorough, practical guide for graphic designers, illustrators, woodcarvers, and history enthusiasts interested in medieval visual culture. Rather than presenting heraldry as an obscure hobby of historical pedigree, it treats the subject as an active design discipline. Readers gain a clear understanding of how historical artisans solved spatial problems on small seals, stone tombs, and textiles, providing immediate lessons for modern composition, branding, and decorative arts.

The reading experience is precise, methodical, and instructionally focused. While the dense terminology—such as ordinaries, fesses, dimidiating, and diapering—demands careful attention, the clear focus on visual artifacts keeps the material grounded. The author's sharp, unapologetic critiques of poor modern craftsmanship inject a lively personality into what could otherwise be a dry catalog of historical relics. It stays with you as an inspiring lesson in how medieval artists combined strict functional rules with exceptional decorative freedom, offering a compelling case for restoring beauty and clarity to contemporary visual design.