Heraldic Colours
In heraldry, colours (also known as distinctions [colouring] or tinctures) are types of field coverings alongside metals and furs. Furs occur only very rarely in Hungarian heraldry.
Tinctures
This is the collective term used for metals and colours; in older heraldic literature they were also referred to as tincturae.
Colours
In early heraldry, or in the so-called period of living heraldry, only four principal heraldic colours were used: red, blue, green, and black. The use of purple dates from a somewhat later, though still very early, period; however, it was generally applied only to secondary elements of the arms (for example, helmet linings, ecclesiastical headgear, the linings of heraldic tents, etc.).
Later Colours
Over time, additional colours appeared in heraldry beyond the original seven tinctures. Since these were not used during the period of living heraldry (i.e. in battle), they are referred to as non-heraldic colours. A system of hatching was also developed for these, which the scholarly literature attributes to Marcus Vulson de la Colombière. Further anti-heraldic colours were introduced into heraldry by Eucharius Gottlieb Rink and Christian Samuel Theodor Bernd.
These include orange, dark red, brown, grey, natural colour, and several other anti-heraldic colours.
Natural colour: the skin colour of Europeans; most commonly used in French heraldry
Sky blue
Dark grey
Ash grey, as in the arms of the South Welsh Gwilt family
“Stone colour”, equivalent to grey
“Brownish”: an extremely unusual colour designation, applied to certain parts of charges and also describable as being in natural colour, such as the brown lion in the arms of Simón Bolívar. In German heraldry this colour is described simply as brown.
In German heraldry, grey, steel blue, and “water colour” are also used. “Earth colour” appears only rarely in German heraldry. In English heraldry, earth colour can be found in the arms of the Royal Miners’ Company, and in Colombia in the arms of Santiago de Cali.
In the Soviet Union, the field of the arms of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was described as “aquamarine”, though it is more accurately regarded as a variety of dark green rather than true aquamarine (blue-green).
The fess in the arms of the Republic of Colombia is described as platinum-coloured. In Canada, pink appeared in 1997, and among the metals, copper was introduced, the latter in the arms of Prime Minister Kim Campbell.
In South African heraldry, ochre appears in the arms of the University of Transkei, and red ochre is visible in the national flag.
In the heraldry of the United States Army, a yellowish-brown colour and a variety of sky blue can be found, while steel grey has appeared in the arms of the Army and the Air Force. The colour bronze is visible in the arms of the Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, but it is used rather as a colour than as a new type of metal.
Most of these anti-heraldic colours already appeared in armorial letters granted during the period of dead or declining heraldry. For example, the arms granted in 1613 to the Kovách family of Horti and Rigyicza had a sky-blue field, and the Fejes family of Nánás received a “sky-coloured” shield in 1654 from King Ferdinand III. In one variant of the arms of Rimavská Sobota, the black eagle is likewise placed on a shield divided sky blue and silver. Furthermore, during the period of living heraldry, the Austrian heraldic poet Peter Suchenwirt (c. 1335–1395) also described one field of the arms of King Louis I of Hungary (1342–1382) as sky-coloured.
The crimson or “blood-red” colour was granted in 1701 to a Bohemian knight as part of his armorial grant.
Metals
Gold and Yellow
In early armorial letters, areas coloured gold were made using real gold leaf. Over time these could wear away and also lead to misinterpretation, for example being understood as bronze or brown. This is probably how later anti-heraldic colours such as brown came into being. In simple representations, gold was replaced by yellow. Occasionally, gold and yellow were considered separate tinctures, as in the 1502 arms of Košice, where the crest consists of a wing that is yellow above and blue below, with a golden lily placed in its centre.
Silver or White
In original armorial letters, real silver was used to denote silver. Over time, silvered areas blackened due to oxidation and often led to misinterpretation. As a result, even today historically incorrect reconstructions are often made of Hungarian historical flags divided red and silver (red-and-white striped), when their depiction is taken from a codex showing such blackened illustrations. In ordinary representations, silver may be replaced by white. Very rarely (in foreign heraldry), white may appear as a heraldic colour distinct from silver, for example in Portuguese heraldry, in the arms of the town of Santiago do Cacém and of the Logistics and Administration Command of the Portuguese Air Force.
Furs
Furs include vair, potent, ermine, and their variants. They occur only very rarely in Hungarian heraldry, but are common chiefly in France and British heraldry. In Western European heraldry, furs may be used not only as field coverings but also for any ordinary or charge, and they are often combined with one another.
Sable also occasionally appears as a fur. Its colour and hatching are identical to those of black. The term Zobelfell was already used by the Minnesingers to denote the colour black, and the Counts of Zollern also used sable fur on their shields. Another rare fur is marten, whose colour and hatching correspond to red. Potent appears more frequently in German heraldry. Feather-scale is a rarely occurring, feather-like scaly pattern which, despite its oddity, is classified among the furs. It is essentially used as a patterned field.
Indication of Heraldic Tinctures
In black-and-white illustrations and on certain uncoloured surfaces (coins, seals, copper engravings, printed matter, etc.), systems of hatching are used to indicate the various heraldic colours, as shown in the accompanying illustration.
The Rule of Tincture
The first rule of heraldry is that metal may not be placed on metal, nor colour on colour. This rule arose at the beginning of heraldry, when coats of arms consisted only of one colour and one metal, in order to ensure contrast and good visibility. The contrast between light metals and darker colours was considered sufficient to distinguish a knight clearly from the crowd in battle. Another reason given for the emergence of the rule is the technical difficulty of painting paint on paint, or placing metal upon metal.
This rule does not apply to furs. Thus, fur may be placed on metal, on colour, or on fur. The rule of tincture was observed so strictly that arms violating it were called anti-heraldic arms. There were only a few exceptions, such as the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which show a golden Jerusalem cross on a silver field. This was adopted to emphasise the mastery of Arabic techniques in the Levant. An example of colour placed on colour is the arms of Albania, which show a black double-headed eagle on a red field. The black covering of the eagle is sometimes interpreted here as fur (which, however, hardly corresponds to reality, while the red field itself could just as well be considered fur), and thus the arms would not violate the rule of tincture.
The second rule of tincture is that only one type of unmixed colour may be used within the same shield. Thus, for example, sky blue and medium blue shades may not be used together on the same shield. Stricter formulations recognise only a single shade of blue, red, etc., in heraldry. One striking example of the astonishing coats of arms produced during socialism was the arms of Zalaegerszeg used in the 1980s, in which the River Zala and the hills of Zala were depicted on the shield using five progressively darker shades of blue; similarly, Siófok placed a light-blue banner in a blue chief.
According to a more permissive interpretation, different shades may appear in individual fields of composite arms (though within a single field only one shade of a given heraldic colour may still be used), since composite arms originally came into being through the unification of separate coats of arms within one shield.
Christian Maximilian Spener called the rule of tincture an axiomatic rule:
“Causan ex hypothesi sua quod arma ex vestimentis veteris militae ortum habeant ita deducit Aegid[ius] Gelen[ius] de manit[udine] Colon[iae] Agripp[iae] L. 2. pag. 116. Hinc elicitur ratio axiomatis scutarii: non esse metallo in matallo, nec colorem in colore pingendum.”
The rule of tincture has also influenced the colours of websites, when considering which font colours are clearly legible on a given background. Nearly all international company logos likewise follow this rule.