Lecture

Separador heráldico
Escudo de Castilla y León

Women and Arms: Contemporary coats of arms for women worldwide, lecture

Contemporary coats of arms for women worldwide, cover.

I have presented the lecture entitled «Arms of Women: Contemporary Coats of Arms of Women Around the World» at the I Congress of Emblematics, in homage and remembrance of Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, organized by the Real Asociación de Hidalgos de España, with the collaboration of the Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía, the Instituto Internacional de Genealogía y Heráldica and the participation of the Fundación Hispano Británica.

This lecture was delivered in Spanish, but I also prepared an English version of the presentation slides.

In this lecture I present coats of arms currently in use by women from different countries, including the United States, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico and Mexico. These are, for the most part, newly created coats of arms, conceived under the guidance of their bearers and painted entirely by me. Each of them reflects values, principles, life paths and cultural roots, demonstrating the expressive vitality of heraldry in the 21st century.

Contemporary coats of arms for women worldwide, index.

For this work I begin from a critical and, at the same time, hopeful reflection, inspired by the words that Don Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués wrote in 2014 at the end of his book «Los emblemas heráldicos: novecientos años de historia», where he stated that «the heraldic system today is not alive, integrated into society; the roots of its integration have dried up» [Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, F.; 2014a; page 494]. In contrast to this observation, this lecture proposes that, over the last decade, from 2015 onwards, there has been a visible revival of contemporary heraldry, fostered by the Internet and social networks, new technologies and the universalization of access to media.

In this context, I consider that heraldry reappears as a symbol of identity in a changing world, as memory in the face of oblivion and as a tool for personal expression and transcendence.

In conclusion, the lecture «Arms of Women» thus seeks to be a respectful homage to the work and thought of Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, and a concrete demonstration of how contemporary female heraldry contributes today to keeping the heraldic system alive.

As could not be otherwise, all the illustrations in this lecture have been created by me.

 

Dr. Antonio Salmerón y Cabañas,
,
Paseo de la Castellana 135, 7th floor,
28046 Madrid, Spain.