France

A number of highly personalised signs also exist: to mark gateways or staircases, such as this oval and curved shield: the coat-of-arms of the family of Johanne Lacarre, Marquis of Saumery in Béarn. It perhaps adorned the entrance gate or front balcony of the château de Saumery near the estate of Chambord, of which Louis-Georges Lacarre was governor in 1755. The embossed reliefs and contrasting striated backdrop enable a precise heraldic description, which reads as follows:

Quarterly: first and fourth gules, a lion or armed and langued of the field (Lacarre); second and third azure, three fasces or, impaling sable, three escallops in pale argent (Arbide – the legacy of an old alliance)