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Page 1 of 2 Our Website This article refers to the "Welcome to our Taylors" heraldic image on the Front Page
The “coat of arms” on the "Home" Frontpage will be recognised by those in the know as a not very authentic or accurate piece of Heraldry: it should be seen partly to reflect my very amateur enthusiasm for the art or science of Heraldry,but, in the context of this website, more as an entry into the spirit of our site, one of only modest seriousness in what we offer in the various categories and sections, all of which can be obtained by the fairly usual process of clicking, pointing/hovering and menus to open up the information, images and thoughts contained in the site.
An "explanation" of the design and devices on the shield can be offered as follows:
The “escutcheon” overall is based on the coat printed on a commercial fridge-magnet for “Taylor” (true to the family spirit of recycling!), which simply has a white background or "field", and on the central black vertical bar ("pale") are three of the white lions like the single one in our base; I have substituted for two of the lions (on the grounds of not wanting to be too closely associated with jingoism) a red rose (for my father's birthplace of Lancashire) and a gold fleur-de-lys (to reflect the love Christine and I have for France) - both these added devices or "charges" are found in other "Taylor" coats.
Quarter 1: The scallop shell is the sign of St James, the name of the Elementary School where Christine and I met, and is also found on other "Taylor" arms.
Quarter 2: The oak leaf represents Bushy Park, the original Hampton Court Palace hunting-ground of Henry VIII, where Christine and I did much of our courting, and perhaps also reflects leafy Hampshire and Surrey woodlands of her mother’s and father's background, and Sherwood Forest in our own present county of Nottinghamshire. The orientation of the leaf has a double-irony to it: first, it hints at an emblem associated with the Cameron clan of Scotland (which my Dad in his cups would claim we were descended from - possibly, when he was further in his cups, from an illegitimate descendant of Louis XIV of France!); it is also placed "bendwise sinister", which signals, to heraldic aficionados, a suggestion of illegitimacy - you are probably agreeing by now! [An interesting sidenote is that we have recently discovered that a James Gibson, an ancestor of Christine, and gardener in Queen Adelaide's time in Bushy Park, the hunting-ground of Hampton Court Palace, also appears to be Scottish in origin.]
Quarter 3: The wavy blue and white bands are based on the usual heraldic symbol for water (a "syke" or "fountain"), where the bands are horizontally orientated in a “roundle”: the vertical direction here symbolises the huge north-to-south extent of Lake Maggiore in Italy, where my mother's father, Luigi Minoletti, was born in 1870/71, in what is now Cannero Riviera, Verbania.
Quarter 4: The cross of St Andrew, in these colours ("tinctures") reflects an Andrews branch in Fulham, London, possibly ancestors of Christine's father (see 'Gallery' picture ). I hope they don't mind our using the coat!
To “difference” the coat (and hence make a clear distinction from any suggestion of our claiming kinship or rights with any other Taylors), I have added a “canton” of the Kingfisher, a lovely bird which has brightened quite a few otherwise uneventful days of angling from local riverbanks (see "Kingfishers " section of "Gallery" & especially this image which has many associations for Vic).
The other “field” colours are chosen merely as a suitable background to the “charges”, and for a reasonable contrast with each other.
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