Getting the Treatment

We saw in the previous lesson that furs are simple repeating patterns with fixed colours. In heraldry there is also a much wider range of repeating patterns available that can take any colours. DrawShield uses the term treatment to refer to these patterns. For example, fretty is a pattern of interlocking lines that create a repeating diamond shape. Since a treatment requires two colours, and we know that colours usually follow the thing that they are describing you should not be surprised to find the pattern illustrated here to be described as:

fretty azure and or

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Note that the first colour is the "background" colour and the second is the pattern. Where the treatment is more evenly split then the first colour is that which appears in the top left.

As you gain familiarity with blazonry you will start to recognise common words with consistent meanings. You have already seen the pattern called fretty, but there is a related charge called the fret, which is a single "knot" of the fretty. In a similar fashion there are other treatments that are repeated patterns of a single charge, including:

• Annuletty a pattern of repeated annulets (ring shapes)
• Mulletty a pattern of repeated mullets (6 pointed stars)
• Billetty a pattern of repeated billets (block shapes)
• Goutty a pattern of repeated gouttes (tear drop shapes)
• Lozengy a pattern of repeated lozenges (diamond shapes)

DrawShield supports a wide range treatments, you can see the complete set in the visual catalog.