On Sunday, October 14, 2018 at 3:35:46 AM UTC-5, Peter Howarth wrote:
I inherited my father's arms, but I never use them in public. My house is not the kind to display a banner, and I no longer wear my father's signet ring now that wax seals have disappeared. Nor do my children bother. For them heraldry is pretty
much irrelevant nowadays. In practice, they have no coat of arms. I see their point. The original purpose of heraldry, as personal identification on seals and over armour, petered out in the fifteenth century and heraldry became simply a status symbol.
That's why my research into mediaeval heraldry only goes as far as 1400 or shortly after.
Mr and Mrs Brooksbank have no title and may feel that heraldry too is not important. That seems a perfectly rational approach. The royal family and the aristocracy may still have uses for their arms. But others can only fabricate excuses to use
theirs. And when they do, nobody recognises them, so the point of the heraldry is lost.
Peter Howarth
I certainly can't deny any of that. We once had a thread on modern uses of heraldry and didn't come up with much. One poster would put his arms on his luggage and luggage tag at the airport to make getting out of baggage claim easier while still accurate.
Another used an armorial banner as a rally point for special needs kids on outings at Disney and etc. There were two others I don't remember. I don't particularly like the idea of using a picture as an icon for facebook/twitter and use arms instead.
Other than that, it's fading fast....
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