Tricking (heraldry)

Tricking is a method for indicating the tinctures (colours) used in a coat of arms by means of text abbreviations written directly on the illustration. Tricking and hatching are the two primary methods employed in the system of heraldry to show colour in black and white illustrations.

The system of heraldry has always had some methods to designate the tinctures of arms. The earliest such method was blazon, which is describing the arms by words and is as old as heraldry itself. We can find the first blazon in the work of Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1135-c. 1183) titled Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charette (c. 1178-c. 1181). The English heraldry system still uses a form of blazon almost unchanged since the reign of Edward I. Traditionally, the images of heraldic manuscripts like the rolls of arms and armorial books are all coloured. However, later on, with the development of book printing as also with the invention of woodcuts and copperplate engravings, there arose the need for designating the colours on uncoloured illustrations as well. As a rule, two main methods were applied to achieve this – tricking or giving designations to the tinctures after the initials of the given colours, and hatching which is ascribing designations to the tinctures by means of lines and dots. While the first method was introduced and developed by the heralds, the second model was developed and adopted by the heraldists. In addition, some other methods were also in use such as giving designations to tinctures by using the numbers from 1 to 7.

In the beginning, tinctures were designated with the given names of the colours as described in the 1576 book by Martin Schrot (d. after 1581), titled Wappenbuch. In his book Baselische Chronik (1580) Cristian Urstis (1544–1588) named the tinctures after the initials of the given colours. Earlier, this method was applied by Virgil Solis (Wappenbüchlein, 1555), and Johann von Francolin (1560).

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