I’ve been told it would never pass. The bears would be too small to be distinquishable on the field.
Your bears could easily be rendered as large or larger than the lions of Guillaume de Valence (three lions charged to each file of a five-point label). He’s got fifteen lions there in about a third of a shield; I’ve seen seme drawn with as few as eight objects over a whole shield, depending on how superior charges are arranged.
Of course the number of objects composing a seme field is a matter of artistic interpretation to begin with.
Another illustration of why I love this board. Thanks.
Or turtles, all the way down.
The “compartment”, the mound of earth on which the shield and supporters stand, is usually left to the discretion of the artist, but is sometimes specified in the blazon. So he might end up with both.
You know, I’ve known about tenné since reading about heraldry in the Children’s Encyclopaedia more than forty years ago, but it never occurred to me to make the connection with “tawny”.
Picture heraldry = instabounce, at least nowadays.
Well… yeah… it’s a roundel argent… 
Mmm… if he’d told the herald he wanted a wolf’s head against the full moon then sure – but, “Sable, on a roundel argent a wolf’s head erased sable” is an otherwise perfectly good blazon, and the resulting image is distinctive and clear. Heck, partnered with “Ulf” as a name it probably gained additional favourable comment at the Kingdom herald’s meeting.
Just as an aside, my favourite evil example is: “Fretty gules and Or a chief embowed argent”. (For the non-heralds: most of the shield covered with a diamond trellis pattern of gold over red, and a wide white stripe across the top with the lower edge of the stripe bulging downwards).
Now imagine it on a Norman shield. :smack:
Well, you can also get supporters by doing some favor for the king. Or at least, you useta could. Robertson of Struan, who would be the chief of my clan if such things existed any longer, has an unusual third supporter - a wild man chained. This commemorates the capture of Sir Robert Graham, who had slain King James I (with considerable justification), by his ancestor Robert Riabhach Duncanson.
Don’t know if the Brits still do this sort of thing (grant supporters, not kill kings, I mean).
Put it like that, sure, it’d pass (except I think it’d conflict like crazy with any number of other devices, not enough CDs)
And it’s possible to get away with picture heraldry if you’re smart.
An ice-cream cone, right?
My own deviceemploys two argent crescents on a sable fess…a liitle like this guy: :rolleyes:
Sorry to dig up a zombie thread, but I just ran across this, and it was just too cool to ignore:
When Pratchett was knighted, he had a sword made. Out of meteoric iron. Which he smelted himself. 
The article says that he has Alzheimer’s disease. Damn. That bites. 
Very cool. Tolkien had a similar idea: List of weapons and armour in Middle-earth - Wikipedia
I’m pretty sure we had a thread about Pratchett’s starmetal sword on here at the time. Or at least, I read about it somewhere…
Or maybe it’s a reference to a quote of Hilaire Belloc: “When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read” .
I had heard, back in the day, that the “no metals on metals, etc. etc.” thing was an SCA convention, not limited to actual real world heraldry?
Was I ill informed?
Although there are some border cases of metal-on-metal or color-on-color, no metals on metals or colors on colors is a convention in every heraldic system that distinguishes “metals” from “colors”. (you don’t find it in, say, traditional Japanese heraldic crests.)
Sir Pterry may be somewhat elderly, but he’s not yet incontinent. So no supporters.
I don’t know Latin either, but the song goes “How much is that doggie in the window?” Small difference.
Yes, as Lightray says, it’s a pretty common real-world restriction. Although the traditional restriction is phrased as metals and colours it gets a bit more complex when furs and “proper” enter the equation, but realistically it all boils down to: ensure good contrast; don’t put light coloured things on top of other light coloured things, or dark coloured on dark coloured.
So, for example, (we’re talking Western European heraldry here), while furs are considered “neutral” – that is neither light-coloured “metals” nor dark-coloured “colours”, they should still be used in such a way as to ensure contrast. Putting a stripe of mostly white “Ermine” fur on a silver shield “Argent” would result in poor contrast (particularly considering that silver is very often rendered as white), whereas the mostly black “Ermines” (or “Counter-Ermine”) would work.
Putting a “bear proper” (usually brown IIRC) on a black shield would similarly not work very well, but on a gold (actually usually yellow) shield would.
I’m pretty much a Pterry moron, I guess. I had to use Wikipedia to understand the desire for hippos.
But I spend more time with the Witches, Death, and Tiffany Aching than I do in Ankh-Morpork.
Though I do also like Nation very much.