Comprehensively covers every aspect of the history, language and use of heraldry.

This informative book looks not only at the medieval world in which heraldry thrived, but also at its language, the elaborate system of coded messages it conveyed, and its inextricable link with chivalry. Featuring more than 700 illustrations, it also covers both the larger aspects of heraldry and everyday heraldic uses, and contains a comprehensive glossary. The international uses of heraldry and the way different countries have interpreted it are also included. Most of Europe and the Americas are covered as well as Scandinavia, Africa and Japan. Novices and experts alike will benefit from the breadth of the content of this masterly history

Design your own personal coat of arms. Detailed, easy-to-follow instructions make it easy even for beginners to fashion emblems that reflect family origins, traits, and accomplishments. Decorate plates, mugs, and stationary or create wallhangings, sew-on patches, T-shirt decals, pin-on badges, and much more.

A comprehensive guide to the authorized unit insignia from the American Revolution through the Persian Gulf War.

Written by Officers of Arms with full access to the College of Arms Library, this guide to heraldry covers the origins of heraldry, the composition of arms and their visual appearance, and the use of arms as decorations

A sensuous, heartbreaking novel about art, beauty and the choices we make that define us for life, from the author of the Giller Prize finalist Summer Gone A young man travels to Paris in 1968, where a series of unlikely events take him to a tiny village in Italyâe"and the one great love of his life. A marble merchant meets a couple on their honeymoon, introducing them to the sensual beauty of Carrara. An Italian woman arrives in Canada to find the father she never knew. A terrible accident in a marble quarry changes the course of a young boyâe(tm)s life and, ultimately, sets in motion each of these stories, which Macfarlane masterfully shapes into a magnificent whole. Oliver Hughson falls in love with wild, bohemian Anna over the course of one glorious summer in Italy. Bound by a sense of responsibility to his adoptive parents back home in Canada, however, he leaves her, an act he will regret for the rest of his life. Narrated by the daughter he never knew he had, The Figures of Beauty is a love story of mythic proportions. Through luck, fate and great good fortune, Oliver found the one place and the one woman he should never have left. This is the story of him trying to find his way back.