It all started with the book “A Display Of Heraldry” by John Guillim
I was stationed in Germany when I got a severe case of pneumonia that our regiment doctor took as tuberculosis. I was sent to the specialty hospital in the village of Grabowsee, in Oranienburg, Germany for treatment.
Hospital life was pretty boring – I had to stay in bed for most part of the day. At the time, the hospital had an old library inherited from the Nazis. So, I started reading.
One day, I stumbled across a book called “A Display Of Heraldry” by John Guillim. It was written in English and had many illustrations. I had plenty of time on my hands and nothing to do, so I started reading it with a vocabulary.
It was a truly fascinating book that made me fall in love with the science of Heraldry and the Coat of Arms.
Back then, in Germany, I did not know that knowledge of Heraldry combined with a deep knowledge of graphic software would make me quite a bit of money thirty years later.
E.R.
Every heraldry artist has his own style and signature. I have mine. I follow the contemporary simplified standard (I call it “Flat Heraldry Design”) widely accepted across Europe, but I don’t make it completely “FLAT” – I call it “3D-flat”.
I’ve been making “Crests” for as long as I can remember. This one I’ve done in 2001 for the New York Russian Club.
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The Heilstätte Grabowsee is a former lung sanatorium on Grabowsee in the Oberhavel district in Brandenburg . It was the first sanatorium for pulmonary tuberculosis in northern Germany and was founded in 1896 by the German Red Cross. After the Second World War, it was used as a Soviet military hospital from 1945 to 1995. The site is now a popular setting for films and photographs.
