Arts & Sciences Research Paper #14: Making a Leather Swan Helm Crest
Our fourteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lady Angela Mori of the Barony of Bhakhail, who demonstrates and explains the process of making one of the splendid helm crests so familiar from manuscript illuminations of tournaments. (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)
Making a Leather Swan Helm Crest
How to Model Crests or Helmets: “Whenever you have occasion to make a crest or helmet for a tourney, or for rulers who have to march in state, you must first get some white leather which is not dressed except with myrtle or ciefalonia, stretch it, and draw your crest the way you want it made. 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 until it is all quite full. When you have done this, put it in the sun for several days. 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. Then take some gesso grosso ground with size, and mix in some beaten tow, and get it stiff, like a batter; and put on this gesso, and rough it in, giving it any shape of man, or beast, or bird, which you may have to make, getting it as like as you can. This done, take some gesso grosso ground with size, liquid and flowing, on a brush, and you lay it three or four times over this crest with a brush. Then, when it is quite dry, scrape it and smooth it down, just as you do when you work on panel. Then, in the same way, as I showed you how to gesso with gesso sotile on panel, in that same way gesso this crest. When it is dry, scrape it and smooth it down; and then if it is necessary to make the eyes of glass, put them in with the gesso for modeling; do modeling if it is called for. Then, if it is to be gold or silver, lay some bole, just as on panel; and follow the same method in every detail, and the same for the painting, varnishing it in the usual way”
– From Chapter CLXIX, Il Libro dell’Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook), Cennino D’Andrea Cennini
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