As you get older, you will likely find yourself challenged to come up with unique and luxurious gift ideas for your family members, especially the eldest members of your family.
Even close friends can be difficult to impress with a gift. After all, how many bottles of perfume and high-class ties can you offer before the act of giving starts to lose any real personal meaning?
If you are looking for an extraordinarily unique gift idea, you might be interested in giving someone a Family Crest.
It’s a truly unique gift that eludes class and nobility.
What is a Family Crest?
We all have a family heritage, something most of us think very little about until there is a viable reason to do so. With that said, wouldn’t it be interesting if you were to do a little research and find out that your family’s lineage leads right to European nobility or British Royalty?
In centuries gone by, certain individuals were entitled to display a personalized “Coat-of-Arms”, or otherwise known as a family crest.
To gain the right to wear a coat-of-arms, one was required to be “armigerous”, a nobleman like a Knight. The actual personalized crest was created by the individual often displayed on their shield or helmet.
Once a crate was created for a specific individual, that crest was intended to be handed down throughout the rest of history from one family generation to the next. Hence the term family crest.
Learning About Your Noble Heritage
If you have ever had work done on your genealogy, you were given the opportunity to learn the history of your family based on names and relationships. As fascinating as that might have been, you probably only learned about a portion of what was available.
If by chance you had nobility in your lineage, there is a very good chance that at some point, your bloodline was assigned a family crest. That crest would have great personal meaning for your family because it would indicate that your family was of honoured status in the past. Regardless of where you might be in life as of today, you do have a right to be proud of having a noble lineage.
A Family Crest as a Gift Idea
The giving of a unique gift is often intended to elicit surprise, joy, and sometimes sentiment. If you were to offer someone you care about a family crest that is directly tied to their family heritage, it would certainly indicate you put great thought into the gift-giving process.
Think about it for a moment.
There is a very high likelihood that the recipient of your family crest gift will have never even heard the term. They might have seen a family crest in a movie set in medieval times but knew not what it was called nor what it indicated. Upon presenting them with their family crest gift, you would be afforded the opportunity to explain the sentiment behind the gift. Indeed, the likelihood is high you would elicit surprise, joy, and sentiment. The commemorative challenge coins with a custom family crest are also a great keepsake!
Where to get a family crest?
First and foremost, you should understand that giving a loved one a family crest should be considered on par with giving an extraordinary luxury gift.
As for where to get a family crest that is suitable for presentation to a loved one, you would need to seek out a reliable merchant that specializes in heraldry research and creating merchandise that includes a family crest.
Most of these research companies employ the top family history researchers in the industry. Likely the team members are part of The Heraldry Society of Europe or the American Heraldry Society.
What does that mean for you?
It means that any family crest they are able to tie to your heritage will be authentic. To locate your family crest, should one exist, the heraldry experts will comb through centuries of official literature, armoury records, and documents that exist in a database of over 23,000 family names.
If they locate your family crest, you would be notified and given the opportunity to have your family crest reproduced as a rendering that is suitable for inclusion on a number of products.
The product lines typically include luxurious certificates, elegant framed prints, and beautiful plaques, e.g.:
- Single Family Crest Prints
- Couple’s Family Crest prints (perfect for a husband and wife)
- Family Crest and History Prints
- Certificate of Heritage (official historical document)
- Digital family crests delivered via email
If you are concerned about being able to find your family crest, you can set those concerns aside. These companies have a 95% success rate at locating and being able to produce authentic family crests. All they would need from you is your family name and the go-ahead to do so.
As a starting point, you can check out Crests & Arms – they are experts when it comes to family research.
