THE HERALDIC CRAFTSMAN of
The Society of Heraldic Artists
APR. 2014                 No. 85

by Alexander Kurov, SHA

 There are few people who honestly merit the title of pioneer but Alexander Kurov is one of them. Still young, he was one of a small group of knowledgeable heraldic artists who reintroduced vibrant, authentic and authoritative heraldry into the identity of the new Russian state, heraldry which has recaptured its pre-Communist roots and yet look forward
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Now a queue, a very long queue, forms at Alex’s door and in the article below he looks at what he tries (and achieves) for his clientele, viz a perceptive honesty and, like the other gifted young heraldic artists of his generation in Denmark, Greece and the Netherlands (the foremost being craft members of this society). Alex challenges heraldic craftsmen all over the globe to throw themselves into their work with imagination, heart, head and soul. Here is his take on that rarely mentioned aspect of heraldry which is so very important to him; its spirituality.
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No. 85 cover depicting the arms of the Zubkowski family 
designed by Alexander Kurov
 
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When I start working on a new armorial project I am looking for a story. We no longer need arms to identify each other in battle or as a mark of identification at all. Thus individuals who wish to possess arms are coming at it from a completely different place or places, often with yearnings they hardly know how to articulate. It is not military, political or social, it is spiritual.
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For years I have been creating new arms for people from various countries of the world and I have concluded that simple or rather ‘traditional’ coat of arms do not satisfy that spiritual need or longing. Having a shield with a few geometrical patterns or bars on it is not enough anymore. I strongly believe that modern arms should not be a Lego-land of meaningless shapes or a preposterous coffin containing some forever frozen facts buried in it. Instead arms today could – and should – serve as a sort of transmitter of some eternal ideas. The arms should ‘talk’.
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In order to reach that goal we should make the main idea clear, so that it can be understood without any special literature. Indeed, what is the point of encrypting some data in the coat of arms (e.g., biographical ones), if no one can decipher them? I know one achievement in which two roses were meant to symbolize two daughters of the armiger and, simultaneously, stood for his spouse whose first name was Rosa. But what can an outside observer see there? Only two roses and nothing else! As a result, the arms that seemed to bear an original idea remain ‘dumb as a fish’.
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This is why when I start working on a new armorial project I am looking for a design which will tell a story, arms that talk. That makes my task quite complicated as we are bound to use rather a limited canonical set of heraldic elements. So one skill (amongst many in the repertoire of the heraldic craftsman) needs to be an ability to create arms which really do draw out that story. My task is to work with my clients, the romantic heroes of our time, to devise arms which will be a key to their own inner world and which will survive and beguile down the ages. Accordingly, the semantic content of their arms is of special importance to them and to me!
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So my approach is to try to emphasize the emotional perception in the new arms. Only then can the arms create a two-way contact between the armiger and the surrounding world. I want to ignite (he imagination of the audience, turning each viewer for a moment into Alice looking into Wonderland through a little door; to peep into the inner world of our armiger ana to learn much more about him or her that way rather than by simply guessing what they meant or calculating the number or family members based on the number of roses on a shield.
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Of course what we devise will not provide the viewer with all the information about the armiger but it should reveal something really important, if initially slightly baffling I should say that almost all the arms adduced as the illustrations to this article, were created to meet the above requirements. There is a complex personality hidden behind each of them, and I nope each achievement not only tells a bit about the armiger, but makes the viewer want to know more. I want people to look at my artwork and pause, wondering about the person it represents. That is what I mean by tantalizing.
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Because of this philosophical or spiritual approach to designing arms, I am unable to create more than six or seven per annum. Alas, for the majority of potential clients the creation of a ‘heraldic masterpiece remains an unrealized dream. And the reason is that the sophisticated, composite technology which I invented and still keep using, developing and improving, requires hours of painstaking work. It takes quite a long time to come up with a good idea and at least 150 hours just to do me artwork. (My illustrations are either 40×50 cm or 50×60 cm.) I hope they result in arms which will talk with meaning through time.
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Arms of Dr. Andreas Andersen (Canada)
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Arms of Dmitry Murzin (Russia)
 
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Arms of Alexander Kurov (Germany)
 
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Arms of Anastasia Titovsky (Russia)
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Arms of Caio Cesar Marques, Vicount de Tourinho (Brasil)
 
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Arms of the Berrisch family (Germany)
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Arms of the Tarabrine family (Russia)