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Hatching (heraldry)

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Hatching (heraldry)

Hatching (sometimes called hachure, from the French word) is a conventional system for monochrome denotation of heraldic armory, whereby the tinctures (colours) are represented by dots and lines. This technique is employed in cases where colours, for either aesthetic, practical or economic reasons are not reproduced – e.g. on surfaces such as woodcuts or engravings, seals and coins.

Several systems of hatchings were developed during the Renaissance as an alternative to tricking, the earlier method of indicating heraldic tinctures by use of written abbreviations. The present day hatching system was developed during the 1630s by Silvester Petra Sancta and Marcus Vulson de la Colombière. Some earlier hatching methods were also developed, but did not come into wide use.

Tricking is an alternative method which has the same purpose as hatching.

Hatching developed as a method of screening used by Renaissance painters. For copperplate engravers and artists such as Zangrius and Franquart, it served as a natural method to designate heraldic tinctures. Copper plate engravers faced difficulties producing coloured illustrations. The first tests of colour copperplate engravings were done by François Perrier around the middle of the 17th century. According to some views, however, multi-coloured copperplate engravings were invented by Abraham Bosse, as described in his 1645 treatise.

Heralds did not like hatching,[citation needed] and the College of Arms gave preference to tricking even beyond the 17th century. Tricking was a simpler and quicker way than hatching to designate the tinctures. Otto Titan von Hefner maintained that the first traces of hatching on the woodcuts began during the 15th and 16th centuries.[citation needed] Both tricking and hatching were applied by the Benedictine monk, philologist and historian Vincenzo Borghini (1515–1580). He drew a difference between metals and colours of arms on his woodcuts by leaving the places for metals blank; similarly, all colours were hatched the same way the colour vert is today. Besides this, tinctures were designated in the fields and on the ordinaries and charges by tricking: R for rosso (gules), A for azure, N for nigro (sable), G for gialbo (Or), and B for biancho (argent). Vert was not represented among his works.[citation needed]

Painting and graphics advanced greatly in the Low Countries during the 15th–18th centuries. For this reason, different hatching methods emerged in the system of heraldry in these territories (mainly in the Duchy of Brabant), such as the methods of Zangrius (1600), Franquart (1623), Butkens (1626), and de Rouck (1645). The four other authors to produce hatching systems in the 17th century – de la Colombière, Petra Sancta, Gelenius, and Lobkowitz – also had close connection with heraldists and artists in these territories.

The earliest hatching system was developed by Jan Baptist Zangrius, a copperplate engraver, publisher, typographer and bookseller from Leuven, in 1600. The hatching systems of Petra Sancta and de la Colombière differed from Zangrius's method only in their hatchings of the colour Sable.

The primacy of developing a hatching method belongs undoubtedly to Zangrius. In comparison to his system, Petra Sancta and de la Colombière made only minor changes to Zangrius' system such as different hatching for the colour Sable. It seems that de la Colombière preceded Petra Sancta and the armorial chart of Zangrius published in French could possibly be known to him pretty well. The artists from the Spanish Low Countries (where by all probability the heraldic hatching systems were invented), that is to say from the neighbouring territories to France, visited Paris very often.

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