[HPforGrownups] House-badges/devices

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 13799

prince_galrion at yahoo.no wrote:

> If you go to
> http://www.hpgalleries.com/mgallery22.htm
>
> you can see the house-badges/devices designed for the school-uniforms
> in the movie.  Now, if some-one can lend me a larg sail-ship and some
> cable-lengths of rope, so I can properly keelhaul the artist(s) who
> was (were) responsible for this mess (after frocefeeding him/her
> lutefisk, smalahove and codfish-tongue), I would feel much better.

Calm yourself. These are at least heraldic *looking,* which is more than
I expected after having seen the "outlined heads over same-color
background" nightmares on some of the merchandise. No, these are fine,
they don't even look remotely like artwork you'd find on a skateboard.

> As far as the devices go (they are not crests, but they do have
> crests, barely visible on top of the helms), we have already seen the
> Gryffindor device.  I still don't like it - the lion is facing the
> wrong way, for goodness' sake.

Where do you get that? I don't recall the orientation of Gryffindor's
lion being mentioned specifically anywhere (although I could be
wrong--Steve?). I think it *is* referred to as rampant (for you
non-herald types, one back foot down, the rest in the air) instead of
salient (both back feet down), which is what you usually get when people
try to draw a heraldic lion. This lion is, in fact, correctly rampant.

It does face to dexter (the right of the shield, but from the position
of the person who would be HOLDING it, i.e., the guy behind it, thus to
the *viewer's* left). However, facing to dexter is the correct assumed
default. Facing the other way would be "rampant to sinister," and
generally must be specified. Again, does it say somewhere in the books
that I'm forgetting, that the lion faces to sinister (or to the viewer's
right)?

On the Hogwarts device, the quartering that combines all the House
devices, the lion is depicted as to sinister, but I think that was done
for visual balance--another bit of artistic license.

They quartered the background, for some unknown reason, presumably to
include both the House colors on the field, which makes part of the gold
lion have to compete with a gold field. But it has a far more heraldic
"feel" than I was expecting and I'm pleased. I mean, it even has a
*helm.* Wow. Sometimes modern attempts at heraldry-looking stuff just
"float" a torse with a crest on it, with no helm. Nor is this mantling
threatening to eat Cincinatti or anything. The design is good and
balanced.

>  The crest may be a lion-head, but it is very difficult to see
> clearly.

Tremendously. I can't make it into a lion-head by looking at it, but I
can't figure out anything else.

> The Ravenclaw device, for some reason, does not show a bronze eagle
> displayed - it shows a black crow perched on a twig (at least it looks
> more like a crow, or sparrow, or magpie, than a rawen or eagle).

No, you're right, this is a raven. This is the most arrant departure
from the book, in that they totally redesigned it.

>  At least most of the field is blue (though the part below the twig,
> for some odd reason, is white).

Well, black on blue is not good contrast, but they used light blue (Bleu
Celeste, a later heraldic color, sky-blue, as different from a true
heraldic royal blue) so you can see the shape of the raven. I'm
suspecting they used a white base because *brown8 on blue is hopeless,
they wanted the perch identifiable as a branch, and so increased the
contrast.

> I will expect the crest is supposed to have some connection with the
> birdie on the chield, but it looks more like a horse's head in
> profile.

I can make out stitching that looks like it's around the point of a
beak, so I'm betting it's a black raven's head.

> The Hufflepuff-device shows a grey and black badger on a field that is
> quarterly of black and yellow.  This means that from a distance more
> than a few inches, it will be impossible to see what the device shows,
> lest you know what is supposed to be there

I think they did a badger proper (in its actual colors) rather than the
black badger that is specified. Hard to tell, because even when you
color a badger black heraldically, there's parts you have to have light,
like the facial stripes, to identify it as a badger. But I think it's a
badger proper.

I think they quartered the field here because the badger doesn't fill
the space on the shield as well as the lion does (not many things
do--another reason lions were so popular). Harder to say why they
departed from the Hufflepuff colors of white and black, unless a
quartering of white and black had a greater contrast problem. By that, I
mean that the badger would stand out clearly against the white sections,
but blend very much into the black; the combination of high-contrast and
low-contrast quarters is avoided by using gold. It's hard to make out,
but not so hard as if you thought it was an odd shape involving the two
dark quarters; this way, the contrast is low all-round, more visually
balanced.

They could, by the way, have improved both identifiability and contrast
by "fixing" the position of the badger, but they stayed with rampant
regardant (looking back over its shoulder) which I believe is specified
in the books, so vivat to them on that point (is it, Steve?).

> - this problem is similar for the Gryffindor-badge.

Not as great for Gryffindor, because a rampant lion is familiar to most
people, and a rampant badger is not something they will likely have seen
before, especially not one regardant.

>  The crest is a badger passant.

Statant, from what I can see. (passant = walking; statant = standing)

> The Slytherin-device has been mauled to the least degree.  The field,
> which should have been green, appears black on the picture, but it may
> just be a rather dark green.

I think that's black, but you may be right, we'll have to see. Again I
am hampered by the heraldry books all being in the room where the baby
is at the moment sleeping. I have simply GOT to get the term for that
snake's position. It dances on the tip of my tongue every time, and I
never recall it.

>  The crest is a snake.

Yup, a little version entire of the one on the shield.

> If they spent 80 mio USD on the movie, they could at least have had
> soemone with a passing knowledge of heraldry device the badges,

They did. Or have you not seen the nightmares of which I spoke? Does
anyone have a merchandise URL that shows those lozengy-background,
modern-logo head-outline things? In "cool" modern colors, not even close
to heraldic? I was almost ill right there in the store.

> or simply stick to what was already in the books.

They did pretty well. The amount of tinkering is, in my estimation,
refreshingly small and explainable. No, they don't follow the Rules of
Heraldry precisely, but they did a surprisingly minor amount of
alteration, and the devices are immediately recognizable as
such--devices, heraldry, shields, medieval things, etc. They have helms!
The helms are depicted in three-quarter facing, but that's acceptable.
Further, the helms are nice, simple, early helms, recognizable as such,
not late-period, fourteenth-century tilting nightmares, and thus they
match the nice, simple heraldry. The mantlings aren't overdone,
enhancing and framing rather than taking over. In short, I could blazon
these easily [which does mean something, see definition below if you're
really, really interested, or just masochistic]. (Do you want me to,
Steve? They're slightly different from the quarters on the Hogwarts
device).

I do take issue with using a raven rather than an eagle, but considering
how such projects are usually "dumbed down" for the audience, if this
rather irresistible cant is the only major sin of change the designers
did, I will forgive. They did what it seems the movie is determined to
do, kept the character of the work while adapting it for a movie
audience. I'm actually quite pleased with this.

--Amanda

P.S. -- Definition, if anyone made it this far-- To blazon a device or
coat of arms, means to describe it in words so that any heraldic artist
can take your description and draw the coat of arms correctly from it.
This is harder than it sounds; the terminology must be precise, down to
positions of legs or wings, etc. Many designs are "unblazonable," that
is, you can't describe them, using terms of heraldry, in sufficient
specific detail that someone could recreate the design going by the
words alone. I frankly had expected that whatever the movie designers
came up with for the House "badges" would be modern-looking and
unblazonable, so this is a nice surprise.

--Amanda


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