The 1600 Engraving Trick That Let Heraldry Survive Without Color

Hatching (Heraldry)

Before color printing, coats of arms needed another way to show their tinctures. Renaissance engravers solved this with hatching: dots and lines standing in for gold, gules, azure, and sable. Jan Baptist Zangrius of Leuven produced the earliest known system in 1600; Silvester Petra Sancta and Marcus Vulson de la Colombière later fought over credit for the version that stuck. Heralds themselves preferred the older shorthand of tricking, and the College of Arms kept using it well past the 17th century.