English armorial : manuscript
This is an English manuscript armorial from 1603, a hand-painted record of coats of arms held at the Boston Public Library and once owned by Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, William Spalding and H. Jermyn. The shields are painted in flat, bright tempera with black outlines, crowned and set against blank paper, showing how heraldic charges are arranged on a field. A designer could take from them the stark blocky logic of chevrons, roundels and bars, and the way a crown sits above a shield as a badge.
