Open any description of a city's coat of arms and you may meet words like "gules", "azure" and "argent". They are heraldic names for colours. This guide explains the tinctures, the rule of tincture, and how to read a coat of arms when it is printed in black and white.
What a tincture is
A tincture is the heraldic term for the colour, metal or fur used on a shield or any part of it. Tinctures fall into three main groups, with a fourth less common one:
- Metals: or (gold or yellow) and argent (silver or white).
- Colours: gules (red), azure (blue), vert (green), sable (black) and purpure (purple).
- Furs: ermine and vair, a separate class that is neither metal nor colour.
- Stains: sanguine, murrey and tenné. They were eventually acknowledged by most heraldic authorities, and were termed "stains" from a belief that they signified dishonour, although there is no evidence they were ever used that way.
The names look unfamiliar in English text, but the meaning is simple: gules is red, azure is blue, vert is green, sable is black.
The rule of tincture
The central rule of colour in heraldry, the rule of tincture, is about contrast. It says that metal should not be placed upon metal, nor colour upon colour. In practice, a gold or silver figure normally sits on a coloured field, and a coloured figure normally sits on a gold or silver field. The rule's practical origin is contrast, although it is applied as a technical rule: appearance alone is not used to decide whether arms conform.
Arms that break the rule were called armes fausses ("false arms") or armes à enquérir ("arms of enquiry"), and any violation was presumed to be intentional. Albania's arms, a sable two-headed eagle on a gules field, are an example of colour on colour.
A well-known exception is the shield of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with gold crosses on silver. Similar gold-and-silver uses appear in the Vatican's flag and arms and in the bishop's mitre in Andorra's arms; heraldic references describe these as indicating the exceptional holy and special status of those coats of arms.
Abbreviations in descriptions
When arms are described or sketched in writing, tinctures are often shortened. Common English abbreviations include:
Tincture — Common abbreviation
Or — O or "or"
Argent — A, ar or arg
Gules — G or gu
Sable — S or sa
Azure — Az or B
Vert — Vt
Purpure — Purp
Proper (natural colours) — Pr
Other languages use different conventions. In German, for example, G stands for gelb (yellow), W for weiss (white), R for rot (red), S for schwarz (black) and B for blau (blue). When you read a source from another country, check which system it uses.
Showing colour without colour
Because colour printing was difficult and expensive, arms often had to be printed or engraved without colour. Two methods are commonly used.
Hatching. During the first half of the seventeenth century several hatching systems were developed. The one that eventually gained widespread acceptance was that of Silvestro de Petra Sancta, first published in 1638. Under it:
- Argent is a plain, empty field.
- Or is a field of dots.
- Gules is vertical lines.
- Azure is horizontal lines.
- Sable combines horizontal and vertical lines.
- Vert is diagonal lines running from the upper left of the shield to the lower right (dexter chief to sinister base, in heraldic language).
- Purpure is diagonal lines running the opposite way.
Tricking. Instead of hatching, the outline is drawn and the tinctures are written in as abbreviations.
Knowing these patterns helps when you read engraved plates, older printed books of arms and black-and-white copies of documents where colour has been lost.
Why tinctures matter for city emblems
Civic heraldry is the heraldry used by municipalities. A town's arms may be reproduced at small sizes, for example on signs, stationery or a web page, and that makes the contrast behind the rule of tincture especially practical. The points below are general editorial suggestions for studying or sketching a municipal emblem, not rules set by any heraldic authority:
1. Start with the field. Decide whether the background is a metal or a colour, then pick the main figures from the other group.
2. Keep the palette small. Using only a few tinctures tends to keep a design easier to recognise when it is reduced.
3. Describe the design in words. A written description using tincture names lets artists produce the same arms again without depending on one particular drawing.
4. Treat meanings with caution. Tinctures were sometimes linked with planets, precious stones, virtues and elements, but in contemporary heraldry they are not assigned any particular meaning. If you want to know what a colour was meant to say in a specific coat of arms, check the granting body or the community's own documents.
Questions people ask
Is "or" the English word? It comes from the French word for gold, and in heraldry it names the gold or yellow metal.
Does every coat of arms follow the rule of tincture? No. Exceptions exist, as the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem show, and violations were presumed to be intentional.
Can a town choose any colours? Rules differ between countries and authorities. Anyone designing or adopting arms should confirm the requirements with the relevant local or national body.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Tincture (heraldry)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry) (categories, rule of tincture, exceptions, abbreviations, hatching and tricking, Petra Sancta 1638, no fixed meanings in contemporary heraldry)
- Wikipedia, "Civic heraldry": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_heraldry (definition of civic heraldry)