Metals & Colours
The basic palette

Or

Or ― de Menezes (Portugal)

Or (tricked as o.). The name comes via French from the Latin auram, gold. Other names used in early English armory include: doré, jaune, or vermeil, and safrin.

Emblazoning

Gold is best emblazoned by a bright orange-yellow (hue {1} ~ 45°) rather than a “pure yellow” (hue = 60°). Gold-leaf – or paints that suspend pure gold in alcohol – can be used to good effect, and is common in modern English grants of arms. However, this does not always reproduce well. Synthetic metallic “gold” paint can tarish to a rather dull brown.

Argent

Argent ― Zgraia (Poland)

Argent (abbreviated Arg., and tricked as a.). The name comes from Old French from Latin. Other names used in early English armory include: blanc, blanchet, and sorargenté

According to Barron, silver and later argent were simply the armorists words for white.

But in The Art of Heraldry: An Encyclopaedia of Armory, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies argued that the colour white existed as a distinct tincture in heraldry.

Other examples might be cited from Portuguese heraldry; for example, the white of the fallen Moor’s clothing and the knight’s surcoat and horse (distinct from the silver of the distant castle) in the arms of municipal de Santiago do Cacém, or the white fan-tailed pigeons on the silver field of the Administrative and Logistic Command of the Air Force.

However, it might be argued that both Fox-Davies’s and the Portuguese examples, white is simply the proper colour of the charge.

Emblazoning

Silver is usually emblazoned by white, although Von Volborth says, “a watery, very light grey represents the metal more appropriately”. Perhaps, if it is a very, very light grey, such as #fcfcfc.

Historically, a kind of silver leaf was sometimes used to emblazon argent, but over time this tarnished and darkened. As a result, it is can be difficult to distinguish argent from sable, or from purpure, often creating the impression that the rule of tinctures has been violated.

Gules

Gules ― d’Albret (France)

Gules (abbreviated Gu., and tricked as g.). The name may come from Old French gueules, red fur worn around the neck, from gole, throat, from Latin gula, gullet.

Some writers offer alternative etymologies – from Persian gul, a rose, or ghūl, a feeder on carcases (compare ghoul); according to Brault there is no evidence to support the first of these derivations.

Other names used in early English armory include: charmin, gules vermeilles, rouge(t), synobill {2}, vermeil(let), vermeil sinople.

Gules is the most common tincture of the field in Polish heraldry. Through the sixteenth century, nearly half of all noble coats of arms in Poland had a field gules charged with one or more argent charges.

Emblazoning

Gules is best emblazoned as an almost fully saturated, nearly pure red (hue = 0-5°). If sanguine is also emblazoned, a brighter red should be used for gules.

Azure

Azure ― Maienthal (Germany?)

Azure (abbreviated Az., and tricked as b.). The name comes from Old French azur, from mediæval Latin azzurum, azolum, from Arabic al (the) + lāzaward (from Persian lāžward lapis lazuli).

Other names used in early English armory include: azou, azur bis, azurin, bleu, inde, pers.

Emblazoning

Azure might be emblazoned in any blue hue. As it is often described as a sky blue, a strong cyan-shaded blue (hue ~ 220°) seems more apropriate than a pure blue (hue = 240°). If bleu céleste is also emblazoned, the purer blue should be used for azure. In any case, a more saturated colour works better for small images.

Sable

Sable ― Gournay (France?)

Sable (abbreviated Sa., and tricked as s.). The name comes from Old French, from Old High German zobel, of Slavic origin; related to Russian sobol’, Polish sobol.

Other names used in early English armory include: noir, sebelin.

Emblazoning

Sable is best emblazoned by dark grey shading to black.

Vert

Vert ― Pupellin (?)

Vert (abbreviated Vt., and tricked as v.). The name comes from Old French verd, from Latin viridis, green, from vire’re, to grow green. vert was uncommon in mediæval armory.

Other names used in early English armory include: synobill {2}.

Emblazoning

Vert might be emblazoned in any green hue. Wood’s Winsor Emerald strikes me as too-bluish a green (hue ~ 160°); my preference is for a pure green (hue = 120°). As with azure, a more saturated colour works better for small images.

Purpure

Purpure ― Aubert (France?)

Purpure (abbreviated Purp., and tricked as p.). The name is Old English, from Latin purpura, from Greek porphura, a shellfish yielding purple dye, reinforced by Old French purpre and influenced by words ending in -ure.

Other names used in early English armory include: pourpre noir, pourprin.

Purpure was rare in mediæval armory, and there are early heraldists, such as Bartolo {3}, that held that purpure was only a synonym for gules. Brault says, “Many authorities reject the authenticity of purpure as a tincture.” and cites Veyrin-Forrer {4}: “Crimson [pourpre] cannot be distinguished from geules…”

Brault also quotes the following explanation from Larousse du XXe siècle (my translation):

The majority of heraldists do not admit poupre as a pure colour, some saying it is composed of an equal mixture of the four other colours and others that it is argent altered by time. It is a joint [mitoyen] colour [émail, enamel] that is used sometimes like a colour and sometimes like a metal.

(The last might be explained if tarnished silver resembled the “true” purpure; thus, “purpure” is a colour when true, but a metal when originally silver.)

Nevertheless, there are examples from the earliest periods, such as the purpure lion of the arms of León, which Matthew Paris (c. 1244-59) blazons in Latin as leo de purpura. Brault also finds a few examples in late thirteenth-century rolls of arms as well as one earlier instance in Le Roman de Troie par Benoît de Sainte-Maure (1154-60).

Fox-Davies says that purpure is “a perfectly well-recognised colour” and that it is “found too frequently to be classed as an exception”. He cites the arms of Henry de Lacy, blazoned in the “Roll of Caerlaverock” (sic!) as ―

Baniere ot de cendall saffrin
O un lion rampant porpin

― and MS. Cott. Calig. A. xviii ―

De or, a un lion rampaund de pourpre

But it was never as common as even vert.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to be certain about the “true” hue of purpure. In early armory purple was painted in a greyer shade than in modern emblazonments.

The example, right, is taken from a late fifteenth-century record of British Arms (Plate 11. in Woodcock & Robinson, which I’ve identified as Wrythe’s Book of c. 1480). The colour being so dark and unsaturated, and with the vagueries of reproduction, it is difficult to be certain of the hue, but it seems to be about 270° – midway between blue and magenta.

Variations in hue from century to century likely account for the emergence of murrey & sanguine as heraldists tried to make sense of these apparently distinct colours. See the discussion of “the colours purple”!

Emblazoning

My preference is guided by Durham University’s “Palatinate” purple. But even this is not fixed: dur.ac.uk  uses  a dark red-tinted magenta , although University scarves, &c., are  a paler blue-tinted magenta . So…

Purpure is best emblazoned as an unsaturated magenta (hue = 300°); as with other colours, a more saturated colour works better for small images. If murrey is also emblazoned, a bluer tint (hue ~ 270°) should be used for purpure for contrast. (Wood’s Light Purple mixed with Zinc White has a hue of about 280°.)

Notes & references

1. ^{^}
   
2. ^{a b} Keen armorists will have easily identified Delirium’s “word that means red or green at the same time” in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: The Kindly Ones as sinople, the modern spelling of synobill.
3. ^{^} Bartolo de Sassoferrato of Perugia, Tractatus de Insignis et Armis, 1358 (cited by Woodcock & Robinson)
4. ^{^} Théodore Veyrin-Forrer, Précis d’héraldique, (Paris) 1951