05/06/2022
Yesterday I had a discussion with somebody at a show about why my shields tend to have stitched hide segments instead of the usual interpretation that is painted spirals and dots.
In general, I don't like using early medieval manuscripts as references for shields because they're often depicted alongside ancient/fantasy wargear, but the spiral motif is something we have evidence for across several different art forms so I think it's worth exploring. These are my reasons for thinking that the spiral motif relates to the construction of shields, and not necessarily their decoration:
1) The spiral motif appears in artwork across a variety of cultures over several hundred years, from 8th century Sweden to 12th century England. Fashion trends rose and fell, but the spiral motif remained.
2) At times, the spirals are overlapped inconsistently by other apparent decorative elements depicted on shields, such as circles and stars.
3) It's economic. Facing a shield with many small triangles allows you to more efficiently use a hide's surface area than if you were to use two large circles.
4) Shields in archaeology have seams. Albeit not forming a spiral, the very well-preserved shield from Tira has a seam and holes in each of its hide faces that correspond with stitching holes in the boards. Some of the shields from Gokstad bear similar holes in the boards, but the hide faces are not preserved well enough to confirm whether or not these corresponded to seams. It's not much of a stretch to speculate that makers of other shields attempted to organize the seams into spiral or spoked patterns.
5) If lenticular shields existed in the early medieval period (artwork seems to indicate this, but there is no direct archaeological evidence. The artwork might just be attempting to depict flat shields being held at an angle) it would be much easier to face them with multiple hide segments than one large piece of hide, which would wrinkle and crease to no end.
My opinion is nothing new and there are many others who've made segmented hide faces before me. I just thought it would be helpful to write this up online as a simple resource to help others who might not have heard this point of view. Of course, if you're thinking about buying a shield from me I'm happy to make it with or without segmented faces, and paint it however you like!
