My Family Silver

A pelican in her piety

A recent article in The Daily Telegraph sheds light on one of our most popular crests - a “pelican in her piety” or, in laymen’s language, a pelican feeding her young. As Christopher Howse explains, this moving image has been an allegorical symbol for the Eucharist since at least the second century. It was used as the frontispiece for the King James or Authorised Version of the bible in 1611. With various minor differences, this image is the crest for dozens of families. myfamilysilver.com usually has items of antique silver listed displaying

the crest. A good example is engraved on this pair of silver snuffers listed by Schredds

Pair Silver Snuffers 1814

To celebrate its return to our screens, I thought it would be fun to trace the crests of the celebrities profiled in the current series of BBC’s popular programme Who do You Think You Are? Beginning this week with Rory Bremner. According to Crestfinder, the Bremner family crest is A Cock’s Head Erased – very appropriate for a well loved entertainer!

Are there any celebrities crests you’d like us to search for?

The burning question you’re probably asking yourself right now is just how are we going to match you to silver engaged with your family crest?

Perseverance and persistence has led us to what we think is the perfect formula. MyFamilySilver.

We have methodically digitised “Fairbairn’s Book of Crests” an incredibly exhaustive resource which for over a hundred years has been the principal source for identifying family crests.

However, as many of you may or may not know, Fairbairns isn’t perfect. There are the odd few gaps and inaccuracies littered throughout. What to do to fill in those gaps?

We are doing just that by cross referencing Fairbairns with our partners at Burke’s Peerage. Meanwhile, the inaccuracies are being corrected by Luke Shrager, a leading authority on heraldry based in London.

Luke also has longstanding connections with the silver trade through his family’s firm Schredds of Portobello.

However, (there always seems to be a however doesn’t there?) The crafty young Mr Fairbairn has given us an even bigger problem.

He allows us to go from name to crest, but not from crest to name. So, given a piece of silver engraved with an unknown crest, we cannot identify the family who once owned it. Until now.

Having loaded Fairbairns text and images into a fantastically elegant database, a short online game of “animal, mineral or vegetable” (remember that?) will, hey presto, identify a crest from an image. All of a sudden and if by magic, all those bits of silver engraved with mysterious crests come alive (and also instantly become more valuable).

Our plan is to make everything you see on site useful and fun for you to use and remember if you have any questions then you can leave a comment or get in touch via email.

What do you think to the Fairbairn’s Book of Crests? Have you read it? Let us know!