[Ansteorra] Research help

[Christie Ward]

>I need some help/direction for research.  I am wanting to start a tooled 
>leather shield cover, but have only found a few sources online.

The problem may be that word "online". Remember that libraries are your 
friends!  And almost all university libraries have their card catalogs 
available via the internet these days, so you can check to see if resources 
that might help you are available and where.

Texas and Oklahoma also have some good interlibrary loan systems set up 
cooperatively between the state universities and the public library systems, 
so if you can't get to the university library to look at something, ask the 
reference desk librarian at your public library - they may be able to get it 
for you!

You left out a critical area here, and that the information about the time 
perid and culture the shield should represent. Something that's appropriate 
for 10th century Scandinavia may not be appropriate for 15th century Milan, 
and vice versa.

If you are interested in Norse shields with leather facings, I highly 
recommend one well-researched online source, Peter Beatson's The 'Viking 
Shield' from Archaeology 
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/shield/shield.html).  There is 
no evidence for tooling, but some leather faced shields were gessoed and 
painted.

You should also consider the question whether what we consider "tooling" 
today is an appropriate leather technique for your period.  For early 
northern Europe, designs were not cut then bevelled to high relief.  The 
most common designs are either geometric cut patterns with no embossing 
(rows of diagonal lines, chevrons, etc.), or else they're pure embossing 
with no cutting.

Another thing to be aware of is that what we call "tooling" is usually 
referred to as "stamping" or "embossing" in medieval contexts, while 
"tooling" refers to gilding.  Be careful when you are reading!

Good luck on your project!

::GUNNVOR::