The Housebook of the Lords of Hallwil
The Housebook of the Lords of Hallwil is a Swiss manuscript of 1550, a family record of noble coats of arms painted in colour on parchment-like pages and kept by the Hallwil family of Aargau. Its pages show heraldic shields, helmets, crests and mantling in a dense late-Renaissance manner, with gold, black, red and green fields. A designer could take from it the layered logic of heraldic composition, with crests rising above helmets and scrolling mantling framing paired shields, along with a palette of gold, crimson and ink-black.
