The twisted blue and gold bar is a heraldic symbol called a torse (also known as a wreath). It appears in coats of arms as a twisted band of fabric sitting between the crest and the helmet, covering the join where the two meet. You’ll see it frequently in Australian national symbols, military heraldry, and family crests where blue and gold are the principal colors.
What a Torse Is
A torse is a twisted strand made up of six folds of fabric, alternating between two colors. These two colors always match the principal tinctures of the coat of arms it belongs to. In heraldic terms, one fold is a “metal” (like gold) and the other is a “colour” (like blue), and they alternate back and forth across the band. The first fold on the right side of the shield (which appears on the viewer’s left) is always the metal.
The torse likely originated as a practical piece of cloth twisted around a knight’s helmet to secure the crest on top and hide the attachment point. Some heraldic traditions trace it to a lady’s favour, a love token given to a knight and worn in tournament. Over centuries it became a standard element in formal coats of arms, appearing in nearly every design that includes a crest above a helmet.
Why Blue and Gold Specifically
When a torse is blue and gold, it signals that those are the “livery colours” of the arms it belongs to. Livery colours are essentially the identifying colours of a person, family, or institution. They’re drawn from the main shield design: the background colour and the primary metal used in the charges or patterns on the shield.
Blue and gold are among the most common pairings in heraldry. In heraldic language, blue is called “azure,” a word that traces back through Arabic and Persian to lapis lazuli, the deep blue mineral historically ground into pigment. Gold is called “or,” from the Latin word for gold, aurum. Historical heraldists assigned virtues to these colours: the fourteenth-century writer Honoré Bonet declared gold the noblest tincture because of its brightness and “fullness of virtues.” Azure was similarly associated with loyalty and truth in various medieval systems, though modern heraldry no longer formally assigns specific virtues to colours.
Where You’ll See It
One of the most prominent examples of a blue and gold torse is in the Commonwealth Coat of Arms of Australia. A wreath of gold and blue sits directly beneath the Commonwealth Star at the top of the arms. Gold and blue serve as Australia’s official livery colours, which is why the national coat of arms features them so prominently in the torse.
Beyond Australia, blue and gold torses appear in countless family crests, university emblems, military insignia, and municipal arms wherever those happen to be the principal colours of the design. If you’re looking at a specific coat of arms and notice a twisted blue and gold bar, it’s telling you that the bearer’s official colours are blue (azure) and gold (or), drawn from the shield beneath it.
How to Read One in Context
A full coat of arms is read from bottom to top: the shield at the center carries the main design, the helmet sits above it, the torse wraps around the top of the helmet, and the crest sits on top of the torse. The torse acts as a visual bridge, and its colours give you an immediate clue about the identity of the arms even before you study the shield in detail.
If you see six alternating twists of blue and gold, you’re looking at a standard torse. Some artistic renditions simplify it to fewer visible twists or stylize the fabric folds, but the colour pattern remains the key identifier. The twisting pattern itself has no separate meaning. It simply represents the physical act of twisting cloth into a rope-like band, which is how the original tournament wreaths were constructed.