Heraldic Arts and Sciences: Beyond the Banner and Shield. Part 15, August, 2007. Last Edit: 18 AUG 07

Back to Heraldry A&S Main Page

How to Make a Quiver: Another simple set of instructions for making a quiver. It looks a little off from most of the illuminations I am familiar with, but it's completely serviceable.

How to Make an Arrow: A brief article on the stated subject.

Other Sites, Supporting Documents

Whips And Angels : A PDF article on painted cloth in the Middle ages. Very, very good.

Painted Seal Bag: 15th c. painted textile from the British Museum.

Archers: Karen Larsdatter's collection of links to images of period archery.

Towards a More Medieval Archer: Article providing basic information on period kit, with a slant towards later period England.

Bracer: A heraldicly embellished archer's bracer circa 1475-1525.

Heraldic Arts and Sciences:
Beyond the Banner and Shield
Part 16: A New Quiver for
My Archery Kit!

I have always enjoyed archery, and it is surely a period appropriate sport for me. Furthermore, there is no need to substitute one weapon for another, as in SCA combat, where rattan often takes the place of steel. It's a real bow, with real arrows, and really capable of performing its designed function: the Old Soldier in me likes that.

I've had opportunity to fletch arrows, and have enjoyed doing so, but for the most part, I am currently limiting myself to arrow repair. You do a lot of it when shooting wooden arrows! I'm trying to make my entire kit heraldic, and this particular article focuses primarily on the quiver.

The predominant heraldic embellishment, the patch, was made as a small oil painting, and then sewn to the quiver. Oil paints are a bit more complicated than casiens, temperas, acrylics, and watercolors, and require a bit more patience. However, used correctly, they're both very flexible and durable, and were frequently used to paint cloth in period. In the modern era, we tend to think of oils exclusively in conjunction with fine arts, but in period, they were used for any kind of painting a craftsman might deem appropriate.

To use oils, you need a little more that paint, water, and brush. The materials used for the patch were:

pre-gessoed linen. You can apply gesso to linen (or any other natural cloth) if you don't want to buy a whole swathe of gessoed linen just to make one small patch.
Commerically produced oil paints in 3 colors: ivory black, cad yellow medium, indian red.
Linseed oil
Thinner. I used a modern product called, not surprisingly,Grummacher Thinner for Oils, but turpentine is a more traditional product. The thinner is used to both dilute the oil paints and clean the brushes afterwards. Be fastidious about cleaning the brushes, as if the oil dries in them, they will be ruined.
Brushes to be forever dedicated to oil painting
Palette
Pots and jars for holding thinner and covering oils between uses.

The initial archery kit. This is a 25-lb bow with arrows that have been fletched and crested according to my heraldic scheme--black and yellow. It took me a while to find a bow that was black and blonde wood, but I eventually did! The arm guard and the finger glove have not yet been modified with my badge, but I will eventually mark them in same fashion.

Here, the first few steps have been completed. The drawing has been transferred to the linen through use of graphite paper, as described in the monkeybox article. However, as this was taped in place on a board, there was no difficulty in the trace.

After tracing, I mixed up a solution of 50% thinner and 50% linseed oil, and used this to dilute the Indian red to a flowing consistency--rather thicker than I might dilute gouache, but certainly far more liquidy than the paste that comes out of the tube. I used this to do a very simple underpainting: I reinforced the tracing. Afterwards, I set it aside to dry.

Drying takes a long time, particularly if you do not choose to use a "dryer"--an additive that can speed the dry time. Oils dry very, very slowly, so set your work some place where it will not be disturbed. If you are not familiar with the drying time of oils, paint a little test patch to the side, and use that to test the paints. You won't be happy if you smear your hard work while trying to determine if it has dried enough to go on to the next step.

Here, the underpainting has dried and I've started painting in the black. One of the nice things about oil's slow dry is that it's pretty easy to lift errors off the canvas should you make one. In this particular painting, the primary problem was an occasional slip past the boundaries, so there were no major problems. So, black applied, I set aside for several days. Again.

Here, the patch is as complete as it can be on the board. The yellow has been applied and all that is left is to let it dry enough for the next step.

So I waited.

And then I cut it out, leaving a small border of canvas around the little painting. I would use that border for sewing the patch to the leather quiver.

What sort of leather did I use?

Why, a leather skirt from the Goodwill. I took it apart and used a quarter panel for the quiver. As it was clothing weight leather, it was easy to sew on my sewing machine. I applied the patch, then seamed up the back (The quiver leather is arranged so that the seam passes middle back rather than on one of the sides). I attached a corduroy strap by inserting it into the bottom seam, sewing this shut, and the sewing the other end to the top back opening.

Of course, as it was clothing weight leather, I felt that the arrows would do much damage over time, and so made an interior bag of corduroy to reinforce the quiver.

Here is the quiver, completed. I had sewn the patch to the quiver along the aforementioned white border, but this then had to be touched up; the white line around the arms looked terrible. I considered painting it several different, complementary colors, or applying a cord around the border, but, in the end, simplicity won.

So I just painted the border black.

And this is my latest set of bow and arrows, a 55# recurve in blonde, brown, and black and arrows fletched black and yellow, knocked red (my heraldic color palette!).

To complete my kit, I'd like to make a black and yellow dress specifically for archery, mark my current arm guard and glove, and obtain a bowhand glove. Perhaps I should just go ahead and make myself black and yellow leather gloves.

We'll see. :-)