Have a Heraldic Rabbit Hole.

We have three doors in our home that have a glass inset, and they are each decorated with a coat of arms. When we moved in, we were told that these had some meaning for the family who built the house and lived here in the first place, but we never looked into it more.

This weekend, after being told that one is the coat of arms of Cologne City, we had a little rootle to try and find out more about the others. It was interesting, even though we remained unsuccessful - it's not so easy to look for specific arms when you don't know how to describe them, and even then it can get complicated.

I've always been half-amused and half-fascinated about the special language of description used when talking about coats of arms. Colours are not red and blue, but gules and azure; there's rules about using metal (white or yellow) and colours on each other; there's bits that are to be included in the description, as they are relevant for telling one variation from another, and bits that are down to artistic license. So I know enough about heraldry to know I don't know much at all - and not sufficient to use portals and search engines to track what we have on these doors.

If you'd like to have a look at some coats, you can do so in the wappenwiki.org, which lists coats of arms from Europe and beyond, starting from those dating back to 1100. It does not have the blazons, unfortunately.

An introduction in the different colours, arrangements, and motifs can be found here. More about the art of describing, also called blazoning, is offered on the website of the Heraldry Society.

There's a bunch more pages, and registers, and databases on the 'net. Enjoy the rabbit hole!