We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
Seven tinctures, two of them metals, plus the furs. The group exists to make one rule visible and one myth answerable. The rule is contrast: colour is not laid on colour nor metal on metal, because arms had to be read at distance and a red charge on blue cannot be. The myth is that each colour means a virtue — azure loyalty, gules military fortitude — which every commercial family-crest site repeats and which the College of Arms and the standard English reference both reject. Tinctures also have a hatching convention for uncoloured engraving, which is how you read the colour of a coat printed in black and white.
The heraldic tincture gold, one of the two metals.
The heraldic tincture silver or white, one of the two metals.
The heraldic tincture red, one of the colours.
The heraldic tincture blue, one of the colours.
The heraldic tincture black, one of the colours.
The heraldic tincture green, one of the colours.
The heraldic tincture purple, one of the colours.
A white field scattered with small black tail-shaped marks.
A pattern of interlocking blue and white bell shapes.