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Coat of arms of Denmark, Greater

Description

This button is featured in January 2026 issue of Button Aerogramme. See also the (Lesser) Royal Coat of Arms button and the Copenhagen coat of arms button that came on the same card. The Daisy button story, honoring Her Majesty Queen Margrethe, is also available in the WRBA Aerogramme archive.

Size
30 mm

Background/Story

Silver-tone heraldic button, approx. 30 mm, bearing Greater (Royal) coat of arms of Denmark, used between 1903-1947.

Material/finish: most likely nickel-plated brass (silver-tone plating over yellow brass) with a soldered brass wire loop shank; both button and shank are non-magnetic, and plating wear on the reverse reveals the yellow base metal.

The Greater (Royal) Coat of Arms of Denmark has a complex, multi-quartered shield topped by a crown and set within a full royal display with two “wild men” supporters and a draped pavilion, crowned above with a royal crown with orb and cross.

The small center shield (inescutcheon) represents the royal house/dynastic arms, a detail typical of the more elaborate pre-1972 style used in mid-20th-century renderings. There are three shield shapes nested like Russian dolls: a big shield divided into four parts; on top of that sits a smaller shield divided into four parts; and on top of that sits a tiny shield split into two halves (with the left half showing the Oldenburg “two bars”). Altogether, there are 14 little sections of design inside the nested shields (4 + 3+ 1+ 4 + 2).

In heraldry, this shield can be described as:

  • Main shield: it’s quartered / multi-part (the big “national/royal” shield with several territorial arms).
  • Central “middle” shield: that is the inescutcheon (dynastic shield), and it is quartered.

  • Smallest shield sitting on top of that: that’s another small shield “overall” (often called an escutcheon en surtout, i.e., a little shield placed over the quarters). It’s typically per pale (halved vertically), with the Oldenburg two bars on the viewer’s left.

This button was mounted on a 9″ × 12″ card that once belonged to Mary H. Gale of Piedmont, California. The card was decorated with white embossed paper showing the coat of arms below, which provided the key clue for identifying the design.

Inge Borland, the Washington State Button Society newsletter editor, points out the presence of the falcon of Iceland in our button, which dates it to between 1903 and 1948.

 

 

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