Why does heraldry fail?

[-JKP-]

JKP,

We are not looking a cloud bunnies or things that might have been. I thought we were looking at the pattern made by the *edge* of the lace collars and nothing to do with any patterns woven into the lace itself.

The edge of these collars often had about 1/2" of lace added to the edge of the fabric (very fragile, floppy, and with holes), especially in the women's collars, and yet they were still able to process the cloth to the stiffness necessary to create an edge pattern similar to a nebuly line. This is quite a challenging task in silk, cotton, or linen. Ask anyone who makes cotton or silk lace what it would take to make the outer edge stiff with something nonsynthetic that holds its shape (starch goes limp when it's damp). That's why I feel the edge shape is very deliberate.


R. Sale wrote: Just like clothing identified a person's origins, armorial heraldry identified either an individual or a particular family. Ecclesiastical heraldry was used to designate hierarchical ranks and orders in religious institutions.

I have made a comparison of VMs tub patterns with those from heraldica.org

However, if you are interested, simply check out the wikipedia article on heraldry. Skip the reading and just look at the pictures. Use the names of patterns that I have listed and the rest is self-explanatory.

I'm not entirely ignorant about heraldry. I have looked at thousands of shield patterns in old manuscripts and I can recognize certain arms, certain families, certain motifs and can often pinpoint the area from which it comes. But I don't know enough about heraldry to consider myself knowledgeable about it, nor do I find any of it self-explanatory, and I don't know enough to distinguish whether the VMS patterns are heraldic.

What I find puzzling about your posts is that they have the tone of "you should be looking for" but we (at least I) don't have the heraldic background to do this. If you do, then it's up to you to present your arguments, educate us and convince us that what you are seeing is "real" rather than an assumption that they are heraldic. If you feel we're not listening, perhaps the arguments need to be presented in a more convincing way. I'm not saying this as a criticism, I'm just saying I don't see the correspondence yet even though I've taken the time to read all your posts.