What Covered Medieval Shield Wooden Cores?

A Note on the Evidence

An undocumented covering is not evidence for a bare wooden shield. Where a facing has not survived or has not been identified, the correct answer is unknown.

This article separates several kinds of evidence, and that distinction matters particularly for organic materials. Parchment, rawhide, tanned leather and degraded skin can be described inconsistently in older literature, while textile may survive only as fragments or as an underlying layer discovered during conservation.

The shields are taken in order of their usual dates, but the order is not a story of progress, and several of the richest shields were funerary, processional or votive objects rather than fighting shields.

Second Half of the 11th Century: Lenzen

The earliest object in my present corpus is the Lenzen shield remains, dated by their excavated context to the second half of the 11th century, approximately 1050-1100. The Lenzen evidence is especially valuable because it warns against beginning the history with the better-preserved heraldic shields of the 13th century.

The museum describes the core as alder made of several glued layers. Roland Warzecha, who examined the shield in the museum, reports two layers, approximately 7 mm thick in total, and a summary of the excavation report says their grain runs crosswise: an unusual two-layer, cross-grained construction. A woven organic material survives around the perimeter. The museum calls it bast; Warzecha identifies grass and suggests willow bark for the lacing. Red paint survives on the exterior.

But no complete facing survives. That means Lenzen cannot currently prove a full leather, hide, parchment or textile facing over the wooden core. Nor should the red paint traces automatically be described as paint applied directly to bare wood: the original preparation sequence is not sufficiently known.

By the later 11th century a shield could already combine a sophisticated laminated wooden structure, an organic perimeter treatment and a painted exterior. Yet the evidence does not allow a universal skin or textile covering to be reconstructed. The archaeological record is incomplete long before the great heraldic shields appear.

Late 12th Century: Two Shields from Szczecin

Two late-12th-century kite shields survive from the early medieval stronghold area of Szczecin, and they must be kept apart. The painted shield is in the National Museum in Szczecin, inventory MNS/A/22250/1, dated c.1176-1200. The second, known as the unpainted shield, was only recently identified and is published together with the first by Dowen and colleagues; the museum record for the painted shield does not describe it.

The painted shield gives the only analysed 12th-century surface among the shields in this article, and it is evidence of a kind the later heraldic shields cannot give. Its excavators state that the ornament was painted directly on the wooden surface, and Irena Jagielska examined paint samples under the microscope and by XRF.

This holds for the areas that were sampled. It does not prove that no covering existed anywhere on the shield, and the function of the black and lime-white layers is not established. But it does rule out describing a parchment facing beneath this paint as an observed feature.

The unpainted shield preserves two adjoining alder planks, identified by microscopic analysis, with a surviving length of 97 cm. Around five planks in the original shield has been proposed as a reconstruction, but its original surface system is not securely documented. Even the convenient label "unpainted" must be treated carefully. It describes the surviving evidence; it does not analytically prove that the shield was never painted or never carried a perishable surface preparation.

The absence of a surviving or reported covering is not proof that a medieval shield was deliberately left as bare wood.

Szczecin therefore establishes two rules. Painted plank-built shields with paint laid on the wood existed in this late-12th-century context, so a skin facing is not the only possible surface. And the parchment system of later surviving shields should not be imported into either Szczecin shield without object-specific evidence.

Around 1200: Seedorf / Arnold von Brienz

The Seedorf shield, traditionally associated with Arnold von Brienz and dated by the Swiss National Museum to 1200-1220, is one of the most important surviving shields for understanding medieval surface construction. Its four-board alder core and structural gluing are established by the conservation report of Senn and Moser. In 1878 Johann Rudolf Rahn recorded parchment with a chalk preparation on the front: this is the earliest shield in the present corpus with a skin facing documented beneath a ground.

Kohlmorgen, summarising the conservation findings, describes one piece of parchment covering the front and turned irregularly but tightly around both side edges and the upper edge, with a second piece filling the centre of the rear.

The reverse is more complicated. Rahn recorded a heavily torn leather covering on the rear, while the later account of rear parchment creates a stratigraphic problem: these materials should not be collapsed into a simplistic statement that the entire shield was merely "covered in parchment" or "covered in leather."

Seedorf confirms that around 1200 parchment could form part of the prepared face of a sophisticated painted shield. At the same time, the reverse is a reminder that medieval shield surfaces could be materially different on their two sides — or could have been altered during the object's long life. The surviving shield is therefore evidence for complexity, not for a universal recipe.

Early 13th Century: Prepared Heraldic Surfaces Become Clearer

The first half of the 13th century gives increasingly sophisticated surviving heraldic shields. The Konrad von Thüringen shield, Marburg inv. 3177, conventionally dated c.1230-1240, is a funerary shield from the Elisabethkirche with a linden core. The museum record lists linden, leather, chalk ground and polychromy. In the 19th century Hefner-Alteneck described the front as parchment-covered, with a raised heraldic lion of pressed leather, and the reverse as parchment, gilded and painted.

The two descriptions need not conflict: "leather" in a short record and "parchment" in a detailed description may name the same skin. But no accessible modern analysis settles the relationship between the skin, the ground and later interventions, so overly precise layer diagrams should be avoided. The lion is a useful warning in its own right: leather on the face of a shield can be an applied relief charge, not the covering.

Nevertheless, the object belongs firmly to the tradition of an organically covered, prepared and polychromed wooden shield. By this point, visible heraldry should not be imagined simply as pigment brushed onto carpentry. The shield face could be constructed much more like a prepared painted panel: timber provided the structure, organic material helped create the skin, a mineral ground prepared the surface, and paint and sometimes metallic decoration created the visible heraldry.

Mid-13th Century: Parchment on Both Faces

By the middle and later 13th century, several surviving Marburg shields provide unusually consistent evidence for parchment-covered construction. Most of the technical detail below comes from Jan Kohlmorgen's descriptions of the Marburg group; they are his published descriptions, not modern conservation reports.

The Vögte von Keseberg shield, c.1250, has a six-board linden core approximately 12 mm thick. One parchment sheet is reported on each face, with chalk ground and painted heraldry above the prepared surface. The exact perimeter treatment remains unknown — evidence for parchment on both faces does not automatically show how the sheets met at the edge, whether one turned around the perimeter, whether a separate edging material existed, or whether portions have been lost.

The W. von Liederbach shield, c.1250-1300, provides still more useful evidence. Its six-board linden core is approximately 8 mm thick. Parchment is reported on both faces, and the front covering is irregularly folded around onto the rear. Chalk preparation is reported on both faces, while the front was probably silvered before the heraldic finish was applied. This is one of the objects that makes it possible to move beyond simply asking what material covered the wood, toward seeing how the covering interacted with the perimeter — a facing could wrap around the edge and become part of the physical construction of the shield rather than acting only as a decorative sheet laid on the front.

The Counts of Arnsberg shield, c.1250-1300, has a five-board linden core approximately 10 mm thick. Its surviving covering is described as thin parchment-like leather on both faces, with a narrow turnover from the front. Chalk ground and relief decoration occur above it.

Late 13th Century to c.1300: A Mature Surface Technology

Around the turn of the 14th century, surviving shields show highly developed covering and decorative systems.

The lion shield of Landgrave Heinrich I of Hesse, dated by Kohlmorgen to 1292-1308 from Heinrich's years as landgrave rather than from the object, is parchment-covered on both faces. On the reverse Kohlmorgen reports an additional, thicker parchment covering, so little processed that hair is still visible in places. That is about as close as the Marburg evidence comes to the boundary between parchment and rawhide: the same shield carries a finer skin on the front and a coarser, hair-bearing one on the back.

Heinrich's shield also carries textile, though not as a facing. Over a gilded chalk ground on the front, the heraldic lion is made from two layers of linen impregnated with chalk ground, shaped and pierced (Kohlmorgen); Helmut Nickel describes it as a lace-like overlay of gesso-stiffened linen over a gilded background.

The Nordeck zu Rabenau shield, c.1300, has a three-piece linden core. The museum record gives leather, a 1988 catalogue a "Pergamentleder" (parchment-leather) covering, and Kohlmorgen a single large parchment piece folded over the left edge; the rear covering survives only in fragments. Above the front covering lies a white chalk ground and painted black heraldic decoration. Substantial multilayer stitched leather also survives as part of the carrying system — a useful reminder not to confuse structural surface covering with leather used for enarmes, bridges, padding or other fittings. Leather on a shield does not necessarily mean that the shield's wooden face was leather-covered.

The Welfenberg/Helfenberg shield, c.1300, gives some of the clearest evidence for an enveloping parchment system. Parchment covers both faces. The front sheet turns approximately a hand's width onto the rear and is described as mitred and nailed. Above the covering lies chalk or engobage, followed by elaborate gilded and painted decoration. This is a major construction milestone: the covering was not simply a painting substrate. Its edge treatment physically connected front, perimeter and rear. Cutting, folding, mitring and fastening the skin were part of shield manufacture.

The Stromberg shield, late 13th century / c.1300, consists of five linden boards, approximately 12 mm thick. Kohlmorgen's summary gives one parchment sheet per face, while later shield lists call the covering white-tanned leather. The difference is unresolved and should remain visible. Its decorative sequence is elaborate.

• Covering → chalk ground → engobage → silvering → paint.
• Modelled decoration and damask effects were incorporated into the heraldic surface.

The eagle shield MV 172 at Sion, c.1300, long attributed to the lords of Raron and now thought more likely to belong to Antoine von Weingarten, broadens the material picture. Laking described it as built of wood, leather and canvas. The museum notes that the reverse is lined with leather, so the leather may belong to the back rather than the face, but the order of the layers has not been published. Its blue field carries a gilded relief eagle. This is significant because it introduces textile clearly into the wider corpus without requiring the pretence that every textile reference represents the same technique. The correct statement is not that medieval shields were covered in canvas — it is that canvas/textile forms part of the documented covering history of some surviving medieval shields.

Early 14th Century: No Single Standard Replaces the Others

The early 14th century does not show one material taking over. Parchment, leather/skin and other combinations continue side by side.

The Steinau/Steinrück shield, c.1300-1320, has a multi-board linden core approximately 12 mm thick. Later shield catalogues report white-tanned leather on both faces. Above it lies a chalk/modelled ground and an elaborate painted and metallic decorative system. This object is particularly useful because it suggests that a leather-covered shield need not be imagined as a rough hide-faced battlefield object — processed leather could support a highly finished heraldic surface.

The older Schenk von Schweinsberg shield, c.1300-1320, has a very thin two-board linden core, approximately 7 mm thick, whose glued board edges Kohlmorgen describes as dowelled. Parchment on each face is his reading, although a later shield list gives canvas on the front and leather on the rear, and that conflict should not simply be erased. Again, the evidence warns that historical terminology and later summaries can conflict.

The shield associated with Karl von Trier, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order from 1311 to 1324, is not one of the Marburg shields. It came from Burg Reifenstein in South Tyrol and is now in the Tiroler Landesmuseen in Innsbruck, and it is described in the heraldic literature as a processional or display shield. Its date of around 1320 rests on its painted heraldry; around 1900 Freiherr von Rahden argued that the board was an older shield painted later, and Bernhard Engel rejected that. Kohlmorgen gives four fir boards approximately 15 mm thick.

Its covering is described in three different ways: Engel wrote of a boiled cowhide on each face, the museum record gives a leather covering, and Kohlmorgen reports parchment on both faces. Which is right is not settled. Engel also describes the reverse as painted: by his time the outline of a lost lining could be read only from the paler paint it had covered.

Even so, the painted reverse reinforces a pattern already visible on the Konrad and Liederbach shields: both sides of a shield could be conceived as finished surfaces rather than the reverse being treated merely as exposed structural wood.

Mid-14th Century: Parchment Continues, but Textile Becomes Impossible to Ignore

The younger Schenk von Schweinsberg shield, c.1350, has a linden core approximately 15 mm thick. One piece of parchment covers each face; chalk ground, silvering and paint form the visible heraldic system.

The Herren von Muschenheim shield, 14th century / c.1350, has three linden boards approximately 8 mm thick. Again, one parchment piece covers each face, above which lies chalk ground, silvering and paint. The shield is also exceptional for its carrying attachment: two complete loops of thick hide pass through holes in the shield and appear to have retained a round-section bar or stick — useful evidence that skin could serve more than one function on the same object, as a surface material and a mechanical component.

The Bartolomei shield, MV 4 at Sion, c.1350, later reworked, is one of the most important objects in the entire sequence because it demonstrates both textile facing and later re-covering. Its wooden core is itself unusual: two willow layers were glued crosswise, one longitudinal and one transverse. The original front covering was linen/canvas, carrying the red-and-gold checky Bartolomei arms and a mounted St Maurice. Later, during the 15th century, the shield was covered again with painted linen and transformed into a Cathedral Chapter targe.

When examining an old shield, the question is therefore not merely "what is it covered with?" It may instead be: which covering belongs to which phase of the shield's life?

c.1376: The Black Prince Funerary Shield and the Rise of Composite Layering

The funerary shield among the achievements of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, at Canterbury represents perhaps the most complex covering sequence in the present corpus. The c.1376 date is securely relevant to its funerary association, although it should not automatically be treated as a scientifically established manufacture date.

Guy Francis Laking described a light wood joined down the centre; later accounts call it poplar. He recorded the front construction as this sequence:

• Wood → white canvas → gesso → paper → leather outer face.

Laking describes the fleurs-de-lis as embossed leather; the construction of the lions is not described in the accounts I have seen. The shield has since been scanned at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, which showed its layers of construction, but I have not seen a published report of the results.

This object is extremely important for understanding the technological possibilities of the later 14th century. The surface is no longer adequately described by one word such as "leather" or "linen." It is a composite laminate of different materials, each apparently serving part of the structural, preparatory or decorative system.

14th Century: Gaps Still Matter

Not every surviving shield gives a complete material sequence. The unidentified Marburg lion shield and the shield traditionally associated with von Dernbach, both dated by the church's records to the 14th century, illustrate a different kind of evidence: despite surviving objects and heraldic information, their original covering and construction have not been published in any source I could find.

First Half of the 15th Century: Textile-Covered Pavois Construction

The Sion Cathedral Chapter pavois, MV 1, dated by the museum to the first half of the 15th century on the evidence of its form and painting, provides strong evidence for textile-based surface construction. Its large convex core is poplar. A Chapter-painted canvas covering lies over an earlier canvas layer, observed at a rear marouflage join. The earlier textile phase is not yet understood: the museum says it has not been examined, so its date, decoration and original function remain unresolved. Once again the evidence shows re-covering rather than a single immutable surface.

The front carries a complex painted representation of the fortified Valère complex on a deep red field, with extensive decorative patterning. The reverse preserves leather carrying straps, arm padding and traces of a wooden handle. The museum leaves open whether it was a working defensive shield or an emblem of the Chapter used in display.

• Wooden structural core.
• Textile facing.
• Painted prepared exterior.
• Leather carrying equipment.
• Multiple chronological surface phases.

Textile is no longer merely a hypothetical substitute for parchment. It is directly part of surviving late-medieval shield technology.

Late Medieval: The Oña Shields D 59 and D 60

Two shields in the Real Armería in Madrid, D 59 and D 60, come from the cloister of the monastery of San Salvador de Oña near Burgos. Their shapes belong to types of the 12th century and around 1200, and older literature dated them accordingly: D 59 to about 1190-1200, with a cedar-like wood and a red field. I place them last because the most detailed study of them, by Álvaro Soler del Campo (1996), made while both shields were under restoration, describes them differently and dates their surviving surfaces much later.

Old-fashioned shield form does not guarantee an early material date.

So the Oña shields are not evidence for how shields were covered around 1200. What they do show is that parchment under gypsum stucco, with metal leaf and paint, was still being used for shields at the very end of the Middle Ages, and they should not be used to back-project this elaborate system into the 12th or 13th century.

What Changed Between the 11th and 15th Centuries?

The surviving shields do not reveal a simple linear evolution from bare wood to leather to parchment to linen. The history is more interesting.

There is therefore no point at which one universal material simply replaces another.

Parchment, Leather and Textile Were Not Interchangeable Labels

Modern reconstruction discussions often reduce the question to "leather or linen?" The surviving evidence shows why that question is too simple.

Parchment is one of the strongest recurring materials in the surviving high-medieval corpus. It occurs on one or both faces and, in some cases, wraps onto the reverse or is mitred and mechanically secured. For reconstructions of particular 13th- and early-14th-century shields, parchment therefore deserves far more attention than it often receives.

Leather or leather-like skin occurs both as surface material and as carrying equipment, and these functions must not be confused. Steinau is described with white-tanned leather on both faces; Seedorf preserves important rear leather evidence; Konrad's lion is a pressed-leather relief on a parchment face; the Black Prince shield uses leather as part of an elaborate outer decorative construction. But leather straps on a parchment-faced shield do not make that shield "leather covered."

Textile should no longer be described simply as a convenient modern alternative. The Bartolomei shield and the Sion pavois provide direct evidence for textile facing, while the Black Prince shield incorporates textile into a multilayer composite construction. The Valère eagle shield also has historical leather-and-canvas documentation, although its precise layer order remains unresolved, and on Heinrich of Hesse's shield, around 1300, linen stiffened with chalk forms the relief lion rather than the facing.

The Ground Was Part of the Technology

The covering was often only the beginning. Across the surviving corpus, parchment, leather or textile frequently provided a substrate for further preparation. Chalk, gypsum or gesso created a smoother surface. Engobage could follow. Silver leaf or gold leaf could be applied. Relief decoration could be modelled. Pigment then created the heraldic image, sometimes accompanied by damask patterns, incising or other elaborate surface work.

This has an important consequence for reconstruction. A medieval shield's painted surface should not automatically be imagined as modern paint applied directly to a structural board. On many surviving elite shields, the visible face is the final layer of a constructed surface system — woodworking, skin or textile work, ground preparation, gilding and painting all belonged to the manufacture of the finished object.

But not every painted shield sat on a covering. The analysed samples from the painted Szczecin shield show its paint layers on the wood itself. Both possibilities are attested; neither is universal.

What About the Edges?

The perimeter remains one of the most dangerous areas for over-reconstruction. Some shields preserve useful evidence: Kohlmorgen describes the Seedorf front parchment as turned around both side edges and the upper edge; the Liederbach front parchment folds onto the rear; the Welfenberg/Helfenberg front parchment extends roughly a hand's width onto the back and is mitred and nailed; the Counts of Arnsberg shield preserves a narrow front turnover; at Nordeck a single piece is folded over the left edge. But many other shields do not preserve or report enough information to establish the original edge system.

Evidence for a turned parchment or skin edge on one shield is not evidence for a separate leather rim on every medieval shield.

Why Cover the Wooden Core?

The evidence suggests several possible functions, and a single covering could perform more than one. An organic facing could help unify a multi-board wooden surface, bridge small irregularities or seams, provide a suitable substrate for mineral ground, contribute resistance to splitting or surface damage, protect the timber, or allow a smooth, elaborate heraldic finish.

But these functions should not be quantified beyond the evidence. A parchment sheet intended partly as a painting substrate may also reinforce a core. A textile facing may both stabilize and prepare the surface. A leather outer layer may be decorative, structural, protective — or several of these simultaneously. Medieval craftsmen did not have to choose only one reason.

What the Evidence Does Not Support

The enlarged corpus allows several common assumptions to be rejected or at least heavily qualified.

• It does not support the claim that all medieval shields were leather-covered.
• It does not support the claim that all shields were parchment-covered.
• It does not support the claim that linen was the universal medieval facing.
• It does not support treating every shield without a documented facing as deliberately bare wood.
• It does not support assuming that every painted shield had a covering under its paint — the painted Szczecin shield's samples show paint on the wood.
• It does not support adding a separate leather rim to every reconstruction.
• It does not support transferring the surface construction of one shield to another simply because they are close in date.
• It does not support dating a surface by the shape of the shield it is on — the Oña shields have early shapes and late surfaces.
• It does not support assuming that the visible surface of a surviving shield is necessarily its original surface — Bartolomei and the Sion pavois demonstrate re-covering directly.

Implications for Historical Reconstruction

The most defensible reconstruction method is object-specific.

Reconstruct the shield whose evidence you actually have — not an imaginary average of every medieval shield.

Conclusion

The history of medieval shield coverings is not a progression from one simple material to another. The earliest evidence in the present corpus already shows sophisticated combinations of wood, organic material and paint, but preservation prevents the complete surface system from being recovered. In the late 12th century the painted Szczecin shield shows paint laid on the wood.

By around 1200, the Seedorf shield shows parchment under a chalk ground on its front. Through the 13th century, parchment on one or both faces becomes particularly well documented among surviving elite shields, sometimes wrapping around the edge and onto the reverse. Around 1300, parchment continues alongside white-tanned leather, leather-and-canvas combinations, chalk grounds, engobage, silvering, gilding and relief decoration.

During the 14th century, textile facings become unmistakable in the surviving evidence. Bartolomei preserves linen/canvas and later textile re-covering. The Black Prince shield combines textile, gesso, paper and leather in a complex composite face. In the first half of the 15th century, the Sion pavois demonstrates a substantial painted-canvas system laid over an earlier textile covering. And the Oña shields show parchment and gypsum stucco still in use at the end of the Middle Ages, on shields whose shapes look centuries older.

The surviving evidence therefore gives something much more valuable than a universal recipe: a history of multiple medieval shield-making traditions. Parchment mattered. Leather mattered. Textile mattered. Mineral grounds and painted finishes mattered. Edge turnovers mattered. Re-covering and restoration mattered. And sometimes the only historically responsible answer is that the original covering remains unknown.

The best reconstruction is not the one that uses the material that sounds most medieval. It is the one whose construction matches the evidence for the particular shield being reconstructed.