Tinctures
The heralds’ palette

Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet — Paul Klee

Mediæval arms had to be clearly identifiable at a distance and so were emblazoned using a limited palette of bold, contrasting colours.

Mediæval armory is inconsistent in the names of the metals and the colours, but gules, azure, sable, vert and purpure eventually came to be recognised as the English armorists’ adjectives. Barron states that gold and silver served as armorists words for yellow and white until late into the 16th century, when they finally made way for or and argent.

Barron quotes an early 15th-century romance that discards the simple words deliberately, telling us that ―

His shield was black and blue, sanz fable
Barred of azure and of sable

More tinctures were added by later heraldists, two or three of which are commonly categorized as stains; others are rare or can be found only in continental heraldry; and modern Canadian heralds have added a new metal and a new colour.

Heraldry also allows charges to be shown in their “natural” hues, in which case they were blazoned proper – although this might also signify a canonical choice of heraldic tinctures.

Rolls of arms often display only simple line drawings of arms, with tinctures indicated by single letters. This is known as tricking. A later development was to indicate the tinctures by hatching, commonly (but perhaps erroneously) known as Petra Sancta.

The rule of tinctures

Simply stated ―

Never place metal on metal, or colour on colour

This rule has its origin in the primary rôle of armory, that a knight’s arms should be easily recognised on the battlefield and similar arms distinguished one from another. Putting a metal charge on a coloured shield, or vice versa, provides the most contrast.

Although a dark-green vert molet (“star”) might stand out on a bright-blue azure field, the shield-painter’s azure might not be sufficiently bright.

But a vert molet will always stand out on an argent field.

However, the rule of tinctures isn’t an absolute rule – although some modern writers claim that it is. (As Captain Barbossa might say, it’s more what you’d call a “guideline” than an actual rule!) Hence, it is sometimes called the tincture convention.

The rule does not apply to:

• Parted and varied fields, which may be of two (or more) colours or two (or more) metals. Here, one tincture is contiguous with, but not on, another.
• Charges placed on a varied field of metal and colour, which may be of either a metal or a colour, and vice versa.
• Small details, such as the claws and tongue of a lion. These are exempt.
• Augmentations of honour and marks of cadency, which are also exempt.
• Furs. Nevertheless, certain combinations – e.g., ermine on argent, sable on pean – are unlikely to be allowed by heralds and kings of arms. In practice, we should probably treat ermines with white fields as metals, those with black fields as colours, and vair and vairy as a varied field.

There are some well known “violations”, although many of these arise because of writer has misinterpreted a colour (or metal) contiguous with another for one lying on another. French heraldry uses the term cousu (sewn) to get around an apparent violation by an ordinary indicating that it’s “really” contiguous with rather than on the field. Furthermore, there may be good reasons for treating a chief as a genuine exception – an extraordinary ordinary!

This leaves a number of “real” violations, the most often cited example being the arms of the King of Jerusalem (1100-1291).

Argent, a cross potent between iv crosslets or ― Jerusalem

These arms were adopted by Godfrey de Bouillon, who became Guardian of the Royal Sepulchre and first ruler of Jerusalem after its liberation from the Saracens at the end of the First Crusade in 1099. The cross potent signifies Christ; the four smaller crosses the Evangelists.

These are seemingly allowed because of the exceptional nature of the kingdom. Furthermore, the rule seems to weaken the further East you go!

Central European heraldry has many examples of sable charges on gules or azure fields, in violation of the rule. The arms of Albania – gules an eagle sable – are possibly the best known internationally today.

In Hungary there are examples of sable on gules or azure fields as early as the sixteenth century. For instance, the arms of the family Kanizsai, granted in 1519: Azure, an eagle’s wing sable taloned Or between a decrescent argent and a sun Or; and those of the family Karomi Bornemisza, granted in 1628: Per fess gules, an eagle displayed sable crowned or, and azure, a buffalo's head cabossed sable maintaining in its mouth a fish (argent?). {2}

Polish examples can be found as early as the fifteenth century. Szymański {3} includes no fewer than seven examples of sable charges on either gules or azure fields out of the approximately 200 shields from this period whose blazons are known. These include the arms of Korwin: Azure, a raven sable with a circlet or in its beak; Kownaty: Gules, a trumpet sable with a cord or, a passion cross of the same issuing from its opening; and Słońce: Gules, a sphere radiant sable, its centre argent. In addition to the seven major examples, he describes occasional variants for the arms of some ródy (noble families) which also use sable charges on azure or gules fields.

Many of Lithuania’s arms are of Polish origin {4}, and there is a certain similarity of style, so examples of sable charges on gules fields can be found here too – such as those of Great Žemaitija: Gules, a black bear with an argent chain on its neck.

Other examples are given throughout these pages.

Proper

Concrete charges, especially living things, can be be emblazoned in their natural colours, and are then blazoned proper.

In modern arms is is often necessary to describe one or more of the “proper” colours in the blazon. For example, a horse proper is ambiguous, and it should be blazoned a bay horse proper.

The arms of the former London borough of Barnes, home to the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge universities, include two oars crossed in saltire proper. But what’s “proper” here is very significant! The blazon continues, the blade of that to the dexter dark blue and that to the sinister light blue. (The same oars are now held by the supporters of the arms of the Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames.)

In some cases, proper indicates that canonical tinctures should be used. For instance, a rose barbed and seeded proper is shown with green barbs and gold seeds.

Emblazoning

In modern graphic design, in print and on the Web, we tend to pay close attention to the exact colours we’re using, and graphics software lets us specify our choices with great precision. But the mediæval herald did not have the benefit of RGB or HSB palettes or the Pantone Matching System (PMS)!

There is no one “right” specification for any heraldic tincture. Nevertheless, the same principles should guide both the artist working with paints or inks and the graphic artist working with FreeHand, Illustrator, Lineform, &c.

Von Volborth says:

Heraldic colours should be strong and true. Red, for instance, should neither be too purplish nor too orange, nor lean towards pink or brown. Blue should not be purplish or greenish. Green should not lean too much towards yellow or blue, and the heraldic purpure is more red-purple than blue-purple. Gold may be represented by yellow, preferably a mixture of yellow and ochre. White may substitute for silver, but a watery, very light grey represents the metal more appropriately.

Anthony Wood (in Friar) recommends a palette of Designers Colours, which I cite in the following pages. (I’ve added colour chips from a Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache Colours colour chart [PDF]  – except for Dark Grey, which seems to be no longer available… The Dark Grey shown is just 333.)

I also offer some suggested “safe colours”  – any of the 216 non-dithering colours whose intensities of red, green, and blue (RGB) have hexadecimal values of 00, 33, 66, 99, aa, and ff – that approximate Wood’s recommendations. More subtle variations in tone can be found between these, of course! My preferences are indicated by a ✒ (pen nib).

Tricking

While many rolls of arms fully emblazon the coats, others often display only simple line drawings of arms, with tinctures indicated by single letters. This is known as tricking.

The commonest approach is to use the initial letter of the tincture – but with b. used for azure (blue) to avoid confusion with argent.

This is rather like the system of abbreviations for “browser safe” colours that was devised for Flags of the World . (N is for noir.)

Hatching

In many heraldry books this is called Petra Sancta after Sylvester Petra Sancta, a seventeenth-century Jesuit writer on heraldry, who set out this system in his second treatise, Tesserae gentilitiae (Rome 1638). However, there is evidence that French heraldist Marcus Vulson de la Colombière developed the same system first, although he did not publish it until the following year, in Recueil de plusieurs pièces et figures d'armoiries… (Paris 1639).

While de la Colombière later accused Petra Sancta of plagiarism, and Neubecker credits de la Colombière with this system’s invention, the two could have developed it independently – it is, after all, only a refinement of a system devised in 1600 by the Flemish engraver Jan Baptist Zangrius (who used a different hatching for sable, right, and had none for purpure).

Several other copperplate engravers and heraldists devised different systems of hatching throughout the early seventeenth century, of which two – by Jacob Franquart, a Flemish painter, and Christophe Butkens, a Cistercian abbot from Antwerp – predate Petra Sancta’s and de la Colombière’s. But it was the scheme the latter two devised that persisted.

Notes & references

1. ^ However, there is a school of thought that has it the other way round. Oettle follows Fox-Davies, using colours as the superclass and tinctures and metals as the subclasses.
2. ^ Éva Nyulászi-Straub. Öt évszázad címerei (Wappen aus fünf Jahrhunderten). Babits Kiadó (Szekszárd) 1999, ISBN 9639015970
3. ^ Józef Szymański, Herbarz: Średniowiecznego Rycerstwa Polskiego, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (Warszawa) 1993, ISBN 8301097973. 
4. ^ Edmundas Rimša, Heraldry: past to present, Versus Aureus (Vilnius) 2005, ISBN 9955601736.