Armorial du Jura. Canton du Jura. Jura bernois, Bienne,
Birseck, Laufonnais. XIIIe siècle – 1815
Two heavy volumes with hardcovers that use white on white, housed within a black cardboard slipcase, present family coats of arms from the Jura region dating back to the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, applying a hybrid aesthetic that jumps between corporate identity, heritage conservation and academic study. The more substantial of the two volumes, whose colourful spine leaps out dramatically from the slipcase, details more than 1,000 coats of arms in alphabetical order over 500 pages. Following a strict but elegant grid, they are arranged in a column at the edge of the page, with brief details of the family, the elements of the coat of arms and sources alongside. All of the coats of arms have been redrawn using a standard set of six special colours or tinctures: gold (or), silver (argent), light red (gules), dark blue (azure), green (vert) and black (sable). The pages look beautiful and make it easy to find the information sought. The slimmer volume provides an academic introduction and a 50-page section containing photographs of source documents. There are also various indices in which the coats of arms reappear, presented in different tintings and various orders. In a glossary of heraldic terms, for example, only the elements of the coats of arms denoted by the term in question are coloured red, while in an index of tinctures the coats of arms are grouped by colour combination. The entire project is highly ambitious and labour-intensive, and the informational impact is spectacular.
