By now, you’ve learned about colors and metals, divided charges and fields, and counterchanging. You’ve come quite a long way! But now, we need to briefly cover something that most primers cover back in section 2: Furs.

A fur is a type of tincture that is technically neither metal nor color. However, it must adhere to the same rules of contrast as those you’ve already learned.

The most common type of fur is ermine. It’s the heraldic representation of white ermine fur, with the tips of the ermines’ tails creating a dotted pattern. It looks like this:

There are three variants that have their own names, which I will cover in a bit, but you aren’t limited to just those. In fact, you can put any tincture ermine spot onto any tincture field, provided they don’t break the Rule of Tincture, and call it “X (tincture of the field) ermined Y (tincture of the spots).”

For contrast, ermine and her variants function identically to the tincture of their fields (i.e. ermine works just like argent, gules ermined Or functions just like gules, etc.)

The four standard forms of ermine are ermine, counter-ermine, erminois and pean, which are sable on argent, argent on sable, sable on Or, and Or on sable, respectively. All four, as well as other variants of ermine, can be seen below.

This is metal on color, which is good contrast. This is an acceptable variant of ermine.

DO NOT USE: This is color on color, and not only poor contrast, but painful to look at. This is not an acceptable variant of ermine. 

This is color on metal, which is good contrast. This is an acceptable variant of ermine.

DO NOT USE: This is metal on metal, and terrible contrast. This is not an acceptable variant of ermine. 

Again, there are variants in tincture, which can be blazoned “vairy X and Y (being the two tinctures used).” One of the two tinctures must be a color, and the other must be a metal. Vair and her variants function like a neutral field or charge, because they are split evenly between a metal and a color.

This uses four tinctures, and as none of the colors touch other colors, and none of the metals touch other metals, this is technically considered good heraldic contrast. However, like other variants of vair, it’s also a pain to draw, sew, paint, etc. Given its complexity, I cannot in good conscience recommend this variant of vair.

DO NOT USE: This is another example of poor contrast. This is an unacceptable variant of vair.

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