A casual discussion on making Medieval crests

for tournament helmets

by Randy Asplund

That's me on the left at the first tournament I wore this crest at. Wouldn't you know it, but another guy showed up with a REALLY nice crest that I seem to recall was made of leather. I was VERY impressed!

As the title implies, this article is not going to be any kind of in-depth scholarly work. I am going to point to a few authentic examples, but most of this article will be without documentation of sources. There seem to be very few surviving medieval crests, and considering the wide diversity of structures, I would say that there may just be no real "right way" to make a medieval crest. Even the great medieval authority Richard Barber speculated in his book about construction materials, suggesting cuir bouilli and wood. Nevertheless, it will give you an idea of what was done in the middle ages and how you can create your own sturdy crest for use in contemporary medieval combat such as is practiced in the Society for Creative Anachronism

Since creating the first draft of this article, my friend Dirk has pointed me to a source showing some samples of actual medieval crests. In the book Leather and the Warrior by John W. Waterer (The Museum of Leathercraft, Northampton, 1981)There is a discussion of the materials used. A double horned 14th c. German crest in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna used rawhide that was painted over. The crest of the Black Prince from England was made of tanned leather and may have been of sheep or goat.

German Jousting helm of the 15th c. with double horned crest. Note the Bull scalp and ears used for the mounting cap!
The ties that secure it are evident in the photo and I'll presume them to be modern.

There is a wonderful chapter on how a tournament or parade crest would be made in about 1400 Italy. It is found in Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell' Arte (aka The Craftsman's Handbook) Cennini was a panel painter, but his book covers many of the craft technologies of the day. It also discusses the techniques for painting on leather, adding diadems, etc., so it is well worth getting a copy from Dover Books.

Cennini wants you to get white leather (it is possible that he means tanned, but just not dyed, rather than rawhide. However, rawhide is very light colored and it may be that he meant to imply rawhide) which is dressed with ether Myrtle or "ciefalonia." The translator of the text, Daniel Thompson, says that ciefalonia is not precisely identified at the time of his writing. However, I looked up the properties of myrtle and here's what I found. The aromatic common myrtle (M. Communis) is most likely the plant he was suggesting. It produces a volatile oil called Myrtol which was once used as an antiseptic and tonic. I am guessing that this may have just been there as a preservative, but I don't know.

To continue, Cennini then directs us to take this leather and stretch it before drawing on the design of the pieces. I am suspecting that he doesn't actually mean stretch it on a frame wet, but rather to just lay it out flat. He directs that you lay out the shape twice and sew the two pieces together. I will add that more complicated forms can be done with more parts, but let's keep it simple for now. You leave enough of an opening so you can pour sand into it. This will be packed tight so it bulks the shape of the crest out to its three dimensional shape. It is then set in the sun for several days. He doesn't say this step is done wet, but obviously it is, for his next step says "When it is dry"

So now it is dry, take the sand out. It should have set at the desired 3-D shape. You now cover it in gesso with two or three coats. The medieval gesso is NOT the same thing we use today. Contemporary gesso is made with acrylic. It is FLEXIBLE! Medieval gesso was made with hide glue. It was STIFF. You will want to use a sealing material that follows those properties so that the leather doesn't get wet and revert to the old shape. If you know how to make medieval gesso (hide glue plus chalk, gypsum, or whiting) go ahead and use it.

The next step is to actually build up the shape of the object from the rough shape base to a sculpted piece of art. In Cennini's description this is done with a material called Gesso Grosso. This is plaster of paris that will be ground with hide glue. It is stiff and fairly strong because of the hide glue in it, but it can be carved and sanded easily. Yes, it is brittle and will chip. Cennini says to mix in some beaten tow into the gesso grosso. Yeah, I know, it will hurt, but you have nine others! Oh wait, that's "tow" not "toe." Tow is actually the short broken fiber removed from flax, hemp, or jute. This is probably doing the same job that straw does in mud bricks or the fibers of glass in fiberglass do to resin. It will hold it together better by adding structure. Anyway, the mixture should be the consistency of a batter, and since hide glue is put on HOT, as it dries AND cools it will set up. It is applied (presumably with a trowel, spoon, brush, or whatever) until the layers are built up to form whatever the rough image will be. Such things would be the shape of a bird, fish, man, etc. Get it as close as possible to the final shape.

The next step is to use more gesso grosso that has been ground with hide glue and thinned a bit so it will flow from a brush, and put on a few layers to even it up. This will still be coarse, so you then go over it again with a mixture of finer gesso called gesso sotile. The sotile version is fine in texture. It is SLAKED plaster, or chalk, or whiting based for the bulk former. This is still mixed with hide glue, but is more fluid and smooth. Put on a few layers to get it all built up right, and then you can scrape, sand or do whatever you need to do to get a very smooth and sculpted shape. I'll add that it would be best to do any actual knife or rasp work at the gesso GROSSO stage.

Cennini says that if you want to add things like glass eyes, or other objects, you can embed them into the gesso. The object may be gilded and painted in the usual way as panel painters do, including a finish with varnish.

Now being modern folks, what this really comes down to is taking some clean leather, cutting out a pattern shape that you can fill to be a sturdy hollow foundation, and then using some plaster-like material to build out the shape into whatever details you like. This can be any number of stiff modeling compounds. The plaster will be pretty light -weight and cheap though. Once you get the form roughed in, there are all sorts of things that could be mounted by setting them into the plaster. These include glass eyes, imitation fish scales of metal foils, peacock feathers, real strings if the crest is a harp, etc. You name it. They even used real rubies and diamonds! You can also use modern acrylic paint to finish the object.

Here's the downside. Unless the crest is only meant for show (parade), it is going to get beaten to pieces in a few blows if you use Cennini's directions!!! Well, the idea was to build it to go on top of a helm for jousting. If you win, you probably didn't get hit, so you keep going in the tourney. If you got unhorsed, well you don't need the crest anymore anyway, do you? Sadly, this is pretty different from what we need in the SCA crest. We need something that will withstand many severe blows without getting destroyed. Our crests will be too much work to be destroyed. Fortunately, there are solutions

The modern fighting crest

Here are some thoughts and experiences that I have put together based on experimentation, experience, and observation. I will also show how I made my own early 14th century style crest.

To begin with, a crest made of gesso is just foolish for SCA combat use. There are a few ways to go. You can learn to craft in leather alone, which is very sturdy, or you can learn to make a simple fan or other simple shape crest, or there is a third option that I have been thinking about. Here are some random thoughts on the later. What about making a mold and filling it with a light weight foam rubber or other pourable or injectable material that can be painted? As long as you put in a sufficient anchor for the mount, it should be easy to replace the crest after each Pas d'Armes you attend.

Anyway, back to reality. I don't do leather sculpting, so I will refrain from advising on that. However, the Manesse Codex (The Minnesingers) from early 14th c. German states is filled with a great number of crests that are representative of all shapes and designs. There are several examples shown below. I also went to the Lutrell Psalter , made in England around 1340. There are quite a few illustrations of simple fan crests between these two sources, and the Lutrell also shows a knight jousting while wearing a very long mantle (decorative length of fabric) without a crest, which from the look of the illustration may be a rectangle of fabric caught up in the center and attached to a single mounting device. This fellow (Richard I of England) is riding against Saladin, who wears a typical fan shaped crest on his helm. The fan is trimmed in little gold spheres that may be bells at the ends of each spoke. See the illustrations below.

Regarding the fan crest, there are some depictions that look like they may be of leather cut in the shape of the fan, but without spokes. Some of them look like they may be some kind of wire spoke arrangement with possibly fabric between the spokes. The livery colors or other colors are replicated on the fan. On the one I built I chose to NOT use metal spikes for safety reasons. Such objects would be able to pass through an opponent's eye slots (or even my own if it is struck right!).

I decided to combine the idea of the fan crest with a mantle. We see this a lot in different sources. The question is how to build it so it can withstand heavy hits from greatswords and pole arms. Under such hits ties break and metal parts get smashed and bent. You can use leather thongs and 1/8 inch thick by 3/4 inch wide bars and the result will be the same.

Before you can actually build a crest though, you ought to have the mounting hardware for the helmet already designed and constructed. After all, the crest must conform to both its shape and its mounting points. When I had it designed I asked for a mounting point in the form of a single large protrusion with a side to side hole. What I got wasn't quite the size I had hoped for, and it may eventually get added to. If you look at the famous Pembridge Great Helm of the 3rd quarter of the 14th century you will see a series of holes in the upper part of the helmet, and while it is possible that these could have been for mounting the padded lining, such linings were usually attached lower down the helmet, so I am guessing that these holes accepted either crest laces OR hard point mounts. Probably the former. The other picture is of Sir Nicholas Hauburk's great helm. You will notice that it has four sturdy loops on top. These are the hard point mounts for laces. This helmet belongs to the late 14th century. I really think that four or three is a good number because it allows for more ties in case any break, and it also will prevent the crest from getting turned around. The early 14th c. samples in the Lutrell manuscript seem to have single mounting points whether it be for crest or mantle. My experience is that when the crest has taken a few hits the ties begin to loosen and it all begins to rotate on my head. This has brought the mantle into my face at inopportune moments, and causes the crest to sit crooked.

I have a couple of pictures here of two different types of attachments. The first is the Pembridge helm of the third quarter of the 14th century. It has quite a few holes at the top

My original plan was to have a metal base on my crest that would contain the end of the mantle. The crest would slip down over this base after the base had been fixed to the mounting point of the helmet with a cotter pin. My armorer made the hole too low to do this, forcing me to use ties.

The base of the crest began as a strip of 1/8 inch thick by 1/2 inch wide steel bar stock. This would be mounted with rivets to a 2 inch wide by 2.5 inch long rectangle of 16 ga. Cold rolled steel. The steel plate has a hole in it for the mounting point to protrude up through, and this would be trapped by a cotter pin, but I ended up using just shoe laces.

I made the mantle out of some really shiny colored fabric. I thought if it was long enough it would probably stay behind me because of its weight. Hah! No such luck! It looks great, but if you don't want it to flap in front of your eyes in a heavy melee, make it shorter! I made it rectangular and two sided. It is 35 inches long and 27 inches wide. The end mounting into the crest base was gathered in folds making a two inch tall bundle that ended up about a half inch thick. I sewed this mass together to hold it and then I bent the steel bar around the mass. The ends of the bar were then bent out 90 degrees to form the feet that would be riveted to the plate. I drilled a hole on the lowest part of the vertical section underneath the mantle mass. These holes were smoothed and became the lacing points for catching the mounting point hardware when it is slipped down over the mounting point. I also sewed the mantle mass around the metal bar to hold it in there. I figured that crimping the bar down on it with a hammer would not be enough. I was quite correct. Then I slathered glue into the stitching just for good measure. The final touch was to hot glue a thin pad of leather to the bottom of the plate so it wouldn't scratch up the top of my helmet.

I have taken hits that actually bent the bars holding the mantle more than 45 degrees without the mantle showing any sign of loosening in it's foundation. Incidentally, the shoe laces break all the time, but didn't break any of the times the bars were badly bent!

The fan crest was the easy part! I took some old leather about 3/32 inch thick and cut two fan shapes 13.5 inches long by 8 inches high. I then joined them suede side to suede side with non medieval hot glue. Next, I used an awl to make the holes and stitched them together. I left an opening at the bottom and glued in some velcro for about 3 inches vertical in the center. I sewed and glued velcro to the mounting bar that holds the mantle as well. It was my original thought that I could use the crest to cover the mounting bar for the mantle, but if I didn't want to use the crest I could put a small leather hood over it with more velcro. In practice I always use the crest, but being able to remove it makes it easy to access the laces. I had expected that having the crest velcro onto the mount would allow it to rip away if struck, thus decreasing the likelihood of damage and possibly preserving the laces. Sometimes it works this way, but usually the laces give and the crest stays fixed to the mount. I can often just tie it all back on for the next fight.

A funny thing is that when I first wore it in a tournament I told my opponents that should any of them strike it off my head, I would declare them the victor. Eventually it went flying, but by my own blows! It seems that one needs to modify their technique when throwing cross body blows. Oh, well.

So, back to the construction. My text step was to paint it. Since the leather was tanned and not oily, I was able to use typical artists acrylics. They worked great, and are easy to touch up. I wanted to add little bells, so I bought a small bag of them at the fabric store and mounted them through 14 ga electric fence wire chainmail links. I realized that if I simply sewed them on they would go missing the first time I fought with it. The edges on the loops where you sew the bells are really sharp and thread would have cut fairly soon. By running a ring of metal through there I was able to get around that. The leather was thick enough that after passing the rings through the holes I made with the awl, I just bent the links closed again and they are perfectly secure.

This crest is a few years old now, and I wear it at tournaments often enough. It had gotten pretty banged around, but it is still holding up just fine. Good luck making your own, and I hope that these thoughts will help you figure out the best methods for you.

The following are crests from illuminated manuscripts. First are a set from the mid 15th century by King Rene d'Anjou and Sicily