page_title: Escutcheon (heraldry)
section_title: Lozenge
hierarchical_section_title: Escutcheon (heraldry) / Shapes / Lozenge
caption_attribution_description: Cardinal's Wharf, Bankside, Southwark. Located between the Globe and the Tate Modern. This is a photo of listed building number 1376548.
context_page_description: In heraldry, an escutcheon is a shield that forms the main or focal element in an achievement of arms. The word is used in two related senses. First, as the shield on which a coat of arms is displayed; second, a shield can itself be a charge within a coat of arms.
  Escutcheon shapes are derived from actual shields used by knights in combat, and thus are varied and developed by region and by era. As this shape has been regarded as a war-like device appropriate to men only, British ladies customarily bear their arms upon a lozenge, or diamond-shape, while clergymen and ladies in continental Europe bear theirs on a cartouche, or oval. Other shapes are in use, such as the roundel commonly used for arms granted to Aboriginal Canadians by the Canadian Heraldic Authority or the Nguni shield used in African heraldry.
  Though it can be used as a charge on its own, the most common use of an escutcheon charge is to display another coat of arms as a form of marshalling. These escutcheons are usually given the same shape as the main shield. When there is only one such shield, it is sometimes called an inescutcheon.
  The word escutcheon is based on Old North French escuchon "shield".
context_section_description: In English heraldry, the lozenge has been used by women since the 13th century for the display of their coats of arms instead of the escutcheon or shield, which are associated with warfare. In this case the lozenge is shown without crest or helm. For the practical purpose of categorisation the lozenge may be treated as a variety of heraldic escutcheon.
  Traditionally, very limited categories of females have been able to display their own arms, for example a female monarch—who uses an escutcheon as a military commander, not a lozenge—and suo jure peeresses, who may display their own arms alone on a lozenge even if married.
  In general a female was represented by her paternal arms impaled by the arms of her husband on an escutcheon as a form of marshalling.
  In modern Canadian heraldry, and certain other modern heraldic jurisdictions, women may be granted their own arms and display these on an escutcheon. 
  Life peeresses in England display their arms on a lozenge.
  An oval or cartouche is occasionally also used instead of the lozenge for armigerous women.
  As a result of rulings of the English Kings of Arms dated 7 April 1995 and 6 November 1997, married women in England, Northern Ireland and Wales and in other countries recognising the jurisdiction of the College of Arms in London (such as New Zealand) also have the option of using their husband's arms alone, marked with a small lozenge as a difference to show that the arms are displayed for the wife and not the husband; or of using their own personal arms alone, marked with a small shield as a brisure for the same reason.
  Divorced women may theoretically until remarriage use their ex-husband's arms differenced with a mascle.
  Widowed women normally display a lozenge-shaped shield impaled, unless they are heraldic heiresses, in which case they display a lozenge-shaped shield with the unaltered escutcheon of pretence in the centre. Women in same-sex marriages may use a shield or banner to combine arms, but can use only a lozenge or banner when one of the spouses dies.
  The lozenge shape of quasi-escutcheon is also used for funerary hatchments for both men and women.Pretoria High School for Girls in South Africa is one of the few all-girls schools that was granted permission to use the lozenge as part of its coat of arms.
caption: Male (shield-shaped) and female (lozenge-shaped) coats of arms in relief in Southwark, London.
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