Fairbairns Book of Crests of the Families Of Great Britain and Ireland first published in two volumes in 1859 with later editions in 1892 and reprinted in 1902, and 1905, and reprinted in 1983. This book of Heraldic Crests was likely for those who knew the family name and were interested in what crest was theirs.
Buyers beware – there are several versions of this reprinted by others which are poorly printed.
As collectors if we have a piece with a crest on it and would perhaps like to know for whom it was made. To attempt to make this possible the book was entirely scanned in and made word searchable. There are notes on the last page of how to word search from the Crest drawing reference hopefully back to the family name. Problems arise that were insurmountable given reasonable time spent.
Standards of proof reading in this publication in 1905 were not to the standard of today. Some crests take you to more than one family, some crests contain more or less than the description given.
The download is for a PDF of 1108 pages, (leaving 469 pages of other reading new here this year).
Other additions include the first known attempt to give biographical detail to Robert M Vetter who helped HH Cotterell for many years for little reward. This is in English written by an experienced Dutch Collector and researcher and is found in
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