[Bell Historians] Indexing foundry marks

[Richard Smith richard@ex-parrot.com [bellhistorians]]

Dickon Love dickon at lovesguide.com [bellhistorians] wrote:

> Has anyone done some work on developing an index system 
> for foundry stamps and other marks on bells?

If I were developing a system for indexing foundry stamps, 
I'd look at how similar problems have been solved in other 
disciplines.  The problem of indexing coats of arms is 
conceptually very similar.  Arms can be indexed by surname 
just as foundry marks can be indexed by founder, but that's 
no help if you want to look up an unfamiliar coat of arms or 
foundry mark.  A list of arms ordered by design is known as 
an "ordinary", and they are arranged in alphabetical order 
of the main thing ("principle charge").  Many geometric 
patterns have standard names by which they're indexed; other 
things are grouped, for example all animals other than birds 
get listed as "beasts".  Within the categories, they're 
indexed by number, forms of decoration and other items on 
the arms.  I'd take a look at one.

RAS


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Posted by: Richard Smith <richard at ex-parrot.com>
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