At the behest of
@The Professor (thanks for pointing out this thread exists, by the way) I'll post the past three works of mine, all of which include coats of arm.
A.
Academia's a bit of a hustle, huh? Here we have the three and a half universities of Tuinstria and a proposed fourth. Much caviling abounds in the hallowed halls of the isle's institutions, with U-Tuin declaring Juvy to be upstart hicks who have only been published in the Smedleyville Law Review 328 times, as opposed to their 340; while Juvy professors drink and laugh over U-Tuin's terribly outdated agricultural surveys and geological simulators. Erstwhile Ptunarran undergrads shout slurs at passing TMC research ships as they pass down the west coast to their research fisheries, and every would-be professor in St. Anne draws up starry-eyed plans for their own campus, filled with statues and gardens and hooke-wait no.
Tasmania has only two universities in real life, Utas and the Australian Maritime College. But you can bet your ass everyone in Newnham hates everyone in Sandy Bay, and I'm not the first to propose that the north splits off as its own university. Maybe could have arranged this list a little more compactly, but ah well.
B.
So I tried to remake the original coat of arms of the University of Tasmania based on
the 1936 design by one Egbert Holder Harry, an alumnus native to Launceston, with some very minor changes (namely the queer angle of the torch). He included a description of the four quartered elements, as well as the crown, as follows:
- A lion passant Gules in a field Argent (the Tasmanian Badge).
- An open book Or in a field Azure (representing the academic side of University activity).
- The Southern Cross Or in a field Azure (representative of Australia).
- A Torch Gules in a field Argent (representing the athletic side of University activity).
- [Crest] A castle rising from a crown (Or), signifying the royal charter held by the University.
The design won out of a field of 47 designs, for a prize of five guineas. However, upon asking the cost of registering the arms for official use the Australian High Commission told them it would cost £150. This substantial cost saw the university eschew Harry's design, instead commissioning a set of arms from a Mr E Kruger Gray without actually registering the design. This, of course, was illegal.
Gray's design is substantively different from that of Harry's, and is the one used by the university in modern times: he gave more prominence to the lion, having them hold the torch, and placed a book on either side of the Southern Cross, all this sitting above the lion. Gray's design also holds the distinction of being the only CoA in Australia that has closed books, whereas they are open in other designs. The torch is also unique among Australian universities, though other institutions have them from time to time.
I think there's a certain charm to Harry's design. His design was rejected but then immediately pilfered by the university, which strikes me as rather unjust. Because they didn't want to register his design they simply stole its elements and recreated it. Harry would've probably had a substantive basis to sue and may have had the means to as he held two bachelors in art and commerce, but I suspect that as the university never officially registered it's coat of arms in the period (though they most certainly have in modern times, particularly with Australia's legal independence from the UK) there wasn't a technical infringement and so no basis to sue. Or perhaps Harry got his five guineas and so was simply disinterested in how the university might warp his vision. In any event, I quite like it.
C.
So my surname is Clifford, which isn't a secret as I haven't done well to keep my identity on the web a secret. All of this CoA sans the rampant lion is a part of the original Clifford CoA, I added said lion to represent my native Tasmania, of which it is a symbol. The motto, 'Semper Paratus, means 'Always Prepared' which is ironic if you know me. The idea had just been scratching at the back of my mind for a while and I wanted to see how it'd look. These are rather a lot of fun to make when they're not too tedious.
