A household brother of mine is interested in researching and recreating the dress, armor, weapons, manners and fighting style of a fourteenth century tournament knight. I had given him a promissory note for cloth heraldic banner at Yule a few years ago. As my research continued on banners, I frankly couldn't find evidence for the use of a banner or flag of any type used by a tournament knight other than as an attachment to a lance by jousters or as an attachment to spears by foot soldiers in melee combat.
His interest is in foot combat tournament knight, so neither the lance nor spear seem appropriate. Besides, I found something infinitely more interesting than a cloth banner--a display shield based on extant shields. Of particular interest are the fourteenth century funerary shields.
I used the Funerary shield of Edward the Black Prince as my inspiration. The device to be created is Or, a demi-fleur-de-lis sable.
A heraldic display shield in the style of the funerary shield of Edward the Black Prince in poplar, linen, leather & gesso
“The shield of Edward, the Black Prince, who died in 1376. Part of his funerary achievement, it is made of poplar wood covered in canvas, gesso and leather and is painted.”1 Chamberlin provides a translation of a more detailed description from Kohlmorgen:
The Black Prince’s Shield is 73cm tall and about 60.5cm wide. The shield body is made from 15mm thick poplar and is slightly concave. It is made from two separate boards connected together. The wood core is covered with several sheets of canvas. Over the canvas is a top coat of paper(!), which in turn is topped with leather. The leather forms the top coat, and is held on with shield mounts and with brass nails. On the front side of the shield are the Arms of England and France: Right top and left bottom, on a blue field golden fluers-de-lis; and left top and right bottom on a red field, three gold leopards stacked over each other.
The arms are built up of molded leather relief, then gessoed and gilded. The claws, eyes and tongues of the leopards are additionally painted. The background of the arms is painted. The individual quarters were originally separated by appliquéd turned cords. All of the blue and red fields are stippled with numerous small punched crosses. On the French quarters they are diagonal, and on the English quarters arranged horizontally. The back of the shield is covered with canvas and painted green.
There are no remains of the hand or arm straps, or of the guige. Only four holes in the shield indicate the points where these must once have been fastened. According to the reconstructed version made at the Tower of London the shield only had one hand and one arm strap.2
Fig 1 Obverse of extant funerary shield of Edward the Black Prince. Take from Kohlmorgen page 110
Fig 2 Obverse of the Canterbury Cathedral‘s reproduction shield. Take from Woolery
Fig 3 Reverse of the Canterbury Cathedral‘s reproduction shield. Taken from Kohlmorgen page 112
Figures 1-3 in the print version are not included in the web version as they are copyrighted images.
Mills provides a few additional details that help to round out my understanding of the extant shield. Of particular note is the velvet pad mentioned on a comparable shield.3
I have used as many authentic materials as possible. Materials used are: poplar board, powdered rabbit hide glue, powdered gesso, white linen, leather hide, black leather dye, copper nails, velvet, synthetic quilt batting, yellow ochre pigment, lamp black pigment, tap and distilled water, egg yolks, red pottery clay, acrylic & polyurethane sealant . A failed attempt at an incised mold for the leather charge utilized Crea-Stone and water.
I have used a combination of authentic and modern construction methods. Reasons for any use of modern methods or materials are described along with an endnote referencing a more correct method or material.4
1. Created
paper patterns of the basic shield shape and the decorative charge in
approximately the same size as the extant shield, but in proportion to
the owner of the shield.5
2. Cut
on-hand poplar board (approx. 15 mm thick) into two pieces of correct
length with power saw, planed with power planers. Power tools were used
to save my physical
strength and speed up the process.6
3. Glued poplar board together with warmed, reconstituted rabbit hide glue. Clamped while drying.7
4. Cut
boards into heater shield shape with power saw. Again, power tools were
used to save time and my energy.
5. Mixed a thick batch of gesso and used it to fill in the gouge made by a planer on the obverse.8
6. Painted a layer of warm rabbit hide glue on the shield’s obverse.
7. Glued down a layer of white linen on obverse. After much thought and discussion I chose not to pursue a source for handmade parchment paper and did not utilize a layer of parchment/paper as is listed in both Kholmorgen’s and Mill’s description.9
8. Painted a layer of warm rabbit hide glue on the shield’s reverse.
9. Glued down a layer of white linen on reverse.
10. Measured Asbjørn for strap and arm rest length & placement.
11. Cut
straps out of leather.
12. Cut and machine sewed armrest out of black velvet. Stuffed with synthetic quilters batting as only a small amount was needed and I had it on hand. Hand sewed final seam.10
13. Mounted armrest and strapping to reverse with copper nails.11
14. Applied
black leather dye to strapping after fastening. I simply forgot to do
this prior to
fastening.
Edge
on view of the shield at this point in its construction.
15.
15. Created a failed attempt at making a carved, incised mold for the decorative leather charge.12
16. Cut
leather hide into rough heater shape & soaked it to make it malleable.
17. Painted a layer of warm rabbit hide glue on obverse, side edges and edges of reverse.
18. Stretched wet leather across the shield’s obverse, over the edges, and around to the reverse. I then nailed the reverse side down with copper nails while wet and trimmed reverse edges to be uniform. I had the good fortune of having the wet leather warp the poplar base into just the right amount of curve toward the body while it dried. See figures 23-25
19. Mixed a thin batch of gesso and painted several layers—between four and six—over the leather layer to create a ground for egg tempera paint. Hand sanded the surface to even out gesso thickness.13
20. Sculpted
natural red pottery clay to create a bas relief of the shield’s
decorative charge—a demi fleur-de-lis.14 
21. Applied modern acrylic sealant spray to the mold to waterproof it. Without a sealant of some sort, the wet leather to be molded around the form would have disintegrated it. I used acrylic sealant for ceramics as I had it on hand.15
22. Molded wet leather on the model to create the decorative charge.
23. Mixed
egg medium for painting, ground the yellow ochre pigment with water and
mixed the two together in a variety of proportions to create different
levels of opacity in the paint.16 See figure 30 
24. Applied several layers of yellow egg tempera paint to the gessoed leather on the obverse and reverse. See figure 31
25. Masked
off velvet pad and leather strapping then painted the reverse layer of
linen with egg tempera.
26. Cut out molded demi fleur-de-lis from background leather.
27. Mixed a thin batch of gesso and painted several layers—between four and six—over the leather charge to create a ground for egg tempera paint.17
28. Mixed
egg medium for painting, ground the lamp black pigment with water and
mixed the two together in approximately a 1:5 (medium to pigment)
proportion to create a dark black paint. See figure 34
29. Applied three to four layers of black egg tempera paint to the gessoed leather charge.
30. Used
copper nails to fasten the charge to the obverse of the shield. See
figure 35
31. Painted over fastening nails and touched up painted areas.
32. Sealed the obverse and reverse of the shield with polyurethane sealant.18
The shield is made of poplar, covered with successive layers of white canvas, plaster, paper and leather. To the leather surfaces of the front are applied the quarterly charges of fleurs-de-lis and leopards, boldly modeled in leather in high relief, and affixed by small brads. Traces of gilding and of red colour on the tongues of the leopards can still be seen. The ground of the four squares is punched with a spotted diaper to enrich the effect. The cruciform punch marks have been ingeniously slanted at different angles in the quarters of France and England respectively to give variety. Curiously enough there is no trace of the label of cadency ever having been on the shield. The back of the shield is covered with canvas originally painted green or blue, of which faint trances remain. Any hand-straps (or “enarmes”) which it may have had are gone, but holes show where they may have been fixed. The two loops near the top were probably placed there for attaching the shield above the tomb. The only other comparable English shield is that associated with the monument of King Henry V in Westminster Abbey. In this case the charges on the front have vanished completely, but the velvet pad at the back for the hand and wrist have survived.
4. I have not been able to locate any contemporary descriptions on how display or tournament shields were constructed. I am drawing many ideas on methods of construction and in some cases materials from secondary, tertiary and reconstructionist resources along with my own ideas. A few contemporary references exist referring to methods likely to be employed on a display shield. The most notable being in reference to pigments, egg tempera, gesso and molded charges from Cennini.
5. Pattern and shield are: 25cm x 21 cm. The charge’s pattern and leather charge are 21cm x 7cm. The extant shield is 73 cm x 60.5 cm as described in the Kholmorgen translation by Chamberlin. I based the size of my shield to the size of the heraldic charge I was placing upon it. Expecting to carve an incised soapstone mold to press the wet leather in, I wanted to keep the charge to a size I felt might be reasonable to accomplish.
As my shield features the arms of Baron Asbjørn Johansen, a simple demi fleur-de-lis was to be centered upon the background. I chose to make the charge take up a substantial portion of the face of the shield, as appears to be common. See figures 4, 5, 6 for examples of 14th century extant shields displaying arms in this way.
6. Obviously, power tools were not used in the Middle Ages. Halstead provides a good survey of woodworking tools. Based on his work, I would imagine that the shield maker would have cut the boards through the use a handsaw (pg 11). It would probably have been planed with the use of a hand planer (pg 14).
7. Monnich tells us that planks for a shield would have been joined with rendered hide glue or a cheese glue (15). Kohlmorgen’s construction photographs (p 153) show the use of a glue warming on a stove. Not being able to read German, I can only guess that it was hide glue. I choose powdered rabbit hide glue rather than premixed “animal” hide glue to better understand the ingredients I was using to the control the proportion of glue to water. I mixed up powdered rabbit hide glue and water, let is sit for 2 hours and then warmed it in a double boiler prior to painting it on.
8. A handheld power planer utilized to smooth the join between the two boards cut a bit more than intended. I mixed up powdered gesso and water, let is sit for 30 minutes and then warmed it in a double boiler. I then painted several thick layers of gesso onto the shield’s front to cover the gouge. After it had dried, I filed and hand sanded the entire obverse of the shield to level the gesso in-fill.
9. I chose not to utilize a parchment layer as handmade parchment tends to be expensive. I reasoned that a costly parchment/paper element that would not be seen was something I was willing to pass on.
10. Mills mentions evidence of a velvet arm rest, although not on the shield of Edward the Black Prince. I thought it would be a nice addition to add a velvet pad. I utilized high quality Mettler Silky finish cotton thread for the pad construction.
11. The straps and arm rest are placed in the correct position for Asbjørn to wear the shield on his shield arm, should he choose to do so. I choose to utilize copper nails in my version of the shield as they were readily available, quite inexpensive and still an appropriate metal for the era. If you look closely at the photos of the reproduction shield with a magnifying glass (obverse and reverse are shown in figures 2 and 3) you can see the small heads of the brass nails/rivets utilized. I could not locate copper nails with heads as small as I would have liked and I chose not to try to trim down the heads of the purchased nails, as I intended to paint over them.
12. Monnich discusses the decoration of shields through gesso and moulded leather (pg 16). He specifically refers to Nickel’s discussion stone molds for creating moulded leather charges (pg 16). Each of Nickel’s articles mentioned in the works cited listing contain a different extant mold/modelstone thought to have been utilized in the creation of gesso and/or leather relief decorations. See figure 20 for a modelstone with its design executed in bas relief. See figure 21 for a modelstone with its design incised. In neither case is the type of stone used for creating the modelstone mentioned.
I originally planned to produce an incised soapstone mold in which to press wet leather. First, I created a reverse paper pattern of the charge to be molded. After several inquiries, I discovered that soapstone in the size I required (approx 20 cm x 7 cm) was not easy to come by and would be quite pricey (over $50). I could have epoxyed smaller pieces of soapstone together to create the size required. I chose not to do this as I feared that a seam in the mold would transfer to the leather being moulded.
Figures 15—19 illustrate the steps I took to create an ultimately unusable mold. I purchased a modern powder casting material known as Crea-stone. Why? I was able to purchase one 5 lb batch to meet my size needs. Having mixed it with water, I poured it into a specially converted wooden tray and allowed it to begin to dry. When it reached a carvable state, I hand carved the design into the material.
When it was completely dry, I took the advice of a Master and tried a piece of test leather in the mold. I discovered two major problems during the testing. 1) I carved the incorrect portions of the pattern into the casting material. I carved out the areas that should have been the low points not the highpoints they would become when modeled. 2) the leather and the mold had some sort of chemical reaction to one another. It may have been mildew, but I am not sure. Regardless, the mold was unusable.
13. You may have noticed in the figures that the leather hide appears to be yellow. Early on in the project, I dyed the leather hide yellow intending to use it as it. As my research got underway, I learned that shields were painted. They leather was not dyed. Evidence for gesso on leather exists and it is described by all three descriptions of my inspiration shield.
Von Nordmark suggested that shields may have been primed and painted with techniques described in Thompson. These techniques include priming the surface with gesso to create a ground to which egg tempera paint mixes with and adheres to.
14. I tried an alternate method of creating the shield's charge. This time I created a bas relief model like that in figure 20. I chose to sculpt my model out of natural red potters clay. Why? I would have had the same problem trying to locate carving stone in the size that I required. Also, my sculpting skills are a bit more developed than my carving skills. Red potters clay was easily obtainable. A reasonably small (5 lb) box of clay provide more than enough material to create the model in the exact size, shape and relief needed.
I followed a to scale paper pattern to sculpt the demi fleur-de-lis as it would have appeared applied to the front of the shield. I used my hands, fingers, water, a kitchen knife and a piece wire strong between two wooden toggle handles to cut, sculpt and join clay together to create the bas relief model.
15. Unfortunately, the clay self hardens and is not waterproof. I reasoned that the clay model would require some sort sealant to keep it watertight long enough for the wet leather moulding process to be carried out. I utilized on hand acrylic ceramic sealant for this purpose. Incidentally, the model broke apart and began to disintegrate during the leather moulding process. The sealant was affective long enough for the leather charge to be moulded and dried, but is no longer useable.
16. Cennini discusses pigments in some detail. Both pigments I chose for my shield are mentioned by him. Yellow ochre is covered in “On the Character of a Yellow Color Called Ochre Chapter XLV.” Lamp black is covered in“ How to Make Various Sorts of Black Chapter XXXVII” (used for the charge) are mentioned by him.
Monnich suggests that the same painting techniques of the panel painter were used to paint shields (16.) Thompson provides a solid review of the materials and techniques used in Medieval painting. The use of egg tempera paints being wide spread. Cennini also mentions several pigments “tempered with yolk of egg” in his work.
I decided to purchase powdered pigments, grind them and mix my own egg tempera paints. Each of Kelley’s articles listed in the works cited pages were invaluable in clearly explaining the process of preparing the gesso, egg medium, mixing and using the paints.
17. Again, I found Kelley’s article on gesso valuable in understanding the purpose of the ground. Cennini describes the use of gesso over leather in "How to Model Crests or Helmets"
"you must first get some white leather which is not dressed except with myrtle, stretch it, and draw your crest they way you want it. And draw two of them, and sew them together; but leave it open enough on one side so that you can put sand into it; and press it with a little stick unit it is all quite full. When it is quite dry, take the sand out of it. Then take some of the regular size for gessoing, and size it two or three times. ....[cutting out some stuff] Lay it three or four times over the crest with a brush. Then, when quite dry, scrape and smooth it down, just as you do when you work on a panel. Then...scrape it and smooth it down, then if necessary to make it with the eyes of glass put them in the gesso for modeling...Then if it is to be gold or silver, lay some bole, just as on a panel, and follow the same method in every detail and the same forth painting, varnishing it in the usual way."
His description convinced me that using a similar process for the moulded leather charge and the leather layer were good choices.
18. I was uncomfortable with the idea of applying a sealant over the shield, as it had come out fairly well. This hesitation was lessened when I was able to flake off some of the black paint from the charge after it had dried. Some sort of sealant was necessary.
I was unsure of the best way to seal the finished shield to protect it from the weather and hold the paint fast. I suspect that shields were likely to have been covered in a varnish. Cennini tells us of the use of varnish.
I was running out of time on the project and determined that a spray sealant would have less change of damaging the paint. Anything painted on may leave unwanted brush marks—such was my reasoning.
I purchased water based polyurethane as the label mentioned it could be used over wood, paint and wallpaper. Unfortunately, on the few areas of the obverse receiving a bit more of the sealant that necessary it mottled the paint. How disappointing.
Cennini, Cennino
d'Andrea.
The
Craftsman's Handbook. Dover
Publications: NY. 1960.
Chamberlin, John
M. V , trans. “The
Shield of the Black Prince,“
Der
mittelalterliche Reiterschild. Kohlmorgen, Jan. Karfunkel Verlag. 2002.
Edge, David & John
Miles Paddock.
Arms &
Armor of the Medieval Knight.
Brompton Books. 1988.
Halstead, Gary R.
European Woodworking Tools 600-1600 C.E.: #121
Society for Creative Anachronism: Milpitas, CA. 2003.
Kelley,
Alessandra.
To Prepare
Chalk Gesso. 2004. 21 May
2005. <2004. 21 May 2005. <http://www.alessandrakelley.com/gesso.html>.
———.
To Prepare
the Egg Medium. 2004. 21 May
2005. 2004. 21 May 2005.
<http://www.alessandrakelley.com/eggmedium.html>.
———.
To Prepare
the Panel for Egg Tempera Part 1: Sizing.
2004. 21 May 2005. <http://www.alessandrakelley.com/panel.html>.
———.
To Prepare
the Panel for Egg Tempera Part 2: Priming with Chalk Gesso.
2004. 21 May 2005. <http://www.alessandrakelley.com/priming.html>.
———.
Preparing
Pigments and Making Egg Tempera Paint.
2004. 21 May 2005. <http://www.alessandrakelley.com/mixpaint.html>.
Kohlmorgen, Jan.
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mittelalterliche Reiterschild.
Karfunkel Verlag. 2002.
Mills, Dorothy and
Sir James Mann.
Edward The
Black Prince: A Short History and The Funeral Achievements.
J.A. Jennings LTD: Canterbury. 1975.
Nickel, Helmut.
"About Ailettes and Achselschilde."
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Kostumkunde (Heft 2). 2002. pp
197-211.
——. "Some heraldic
Fragments Found at Castle Montfort/Starkenberg in 1926, and the Arms of
the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights." The Metropolitan Museum
Journal 24 (1989). pp35-46.
Thompson, Daniel
V. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting.
Dover Publication.
Von Nordmark, Karl
"Construction of the Medieval Knightly Shield" Tournaments Illuminated
104, Fall 1992 (15-187.)
Woolery, April. “Funerary Shield of Edward, the Black Prince (d. 1376)” Mar 2003. 24 May 2005. <http://www.geocities.com/scalaska1/bigshield2.html>
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