Oh, real-world heraldry is EASY compared to this. I mean, there are more color rules, but WAY less geometry. It sounds like the Humanfolk use much more traditional heraldry, and Tolkien was trying to differentiate the elves by giving them the fancy stuff. I am, however, going to say something terrible to you:
Some of these would make VERY pretty rose windows, and there's a Dark Project mesh for that. (I think also possibly a Kativip one, but I don't remember.)
(And white on a colored field is because there are two metals (white and yellow) and five tinctures (red, blue, green, black, and in the High Middle Ages, purple (even later on, you get even more colors, like sky blue, orange, carnation, and brown)) and you can only put a metal on a tincture or a tincture on a metal. This is because of contrast; the original purpose of heraldry is so you can look at a warrior's shield and know who he is (and thus if you're supposed to attack him or not). Why Tolkien keeps using argent charges on tincture fields instead of Or or colored charges on metal fields, I have no idea... but modern license plates use the same type of color theory for high readability.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-01-20 04:05 am (UTC)Some of these would make VERY pretty rose windows, and there's a Dark Project mesh for that. (I think also possibly a Kativip one, but I don't remember.)
(And white on a colored field is because there are two metals (white and yellow) and five tinctures (red, blue, green, black, and in the High Middle Ages, purple (even later on, you get even more colors, like sky blue, orange, carnation, and brown)) and you can only put a metal on a tincture or a tincture on a metal. This is because of contrast; the original purpose of heraldry is so you can look at a warrior's shield and know who he is (and thus if you're supposed to attack him or not). Why Tolkien keeps using argent charges on tincture fields instead of Or or colored charges on metal fields, I have no idea... but modern license plates use the same type of color theory for high readability.)