Crests – Coats-of-arms on stained glass – Seals

Which is your family crest?

In this time and age you may still find coats-of-arms on stained glass displayed in sitting rooms with a somewhat ostentatious dignity. If you address the master of the house, he will proudly declare that this is the pictorial illustration of his family crest.

His disillusionment will be all the greater once a family of the same name happens to introduce him to some different coats-of-arms on stained glass.

Unless his interest in the matter is suddenly disrupted by so excessive a strain, he will be all the more curious to find a plausible answer to this most strange of all observations.

Any amateur gradually growing into an expert will soon remember that even in his own family different crests have been used in the course of time. On the other hand, it was completely normal for some family crests to remain in use for several centuries.

In former times family crests did not enjoy any legal protection so that everyone could create his own crest at will. However, crests were essential to those only in an elevated position who had to seal documents. When creating crests, people resorted to elements of their own professional life (for example the axe of carpenter) or to more general elements in heraldry (trefoiled clover, for instance). It goes without saying that some descendant in some other profession need not necessarily have had the same seal, if he still had one at all.

Thus with a sense of sobriety we have to put up with the fact that in most cases „real“ family crests do not exist as such, and that in the course of time our ancestors used a wide range of different
family crests.