"what color should ancient bows be?" Topic

Are bows ever painted? Or are they left natural wood? Or varnished?

I know the Japanese lacquered theirs. I've seen artwork with painted bows too. I usually just paint them wood colour.

The Mongols would sometimes wrap them in leather. (It deadens the sound a bit.)

Most horse bows I've seen have been painted with flowery designs. Basically, if the users would wear bright excessive clothes, there's a fair chance that the bows were decorated, too.

Japanese bows are very simple looking. How they get that way is not very simple, but that's the Japanese for you.

Excavated composite bows, where some of the structure of the bow survives, are all wrapped in birch bark regardless of what went over the top. The birch bark acted as a waterproofing layer and remained stuck in place even if a paint or lacquer top layer cracked.

As for colours of he top layers, you have to start out with mosaics, frescoes and such until c.1600's where we start getting bows that have spent their time in various collections and the surface painting has survived. Bright & garish, no two the same is a pretty good guess.

Munition longbows were supplied "white", which either meant plain or a simple water-resistant coat of white paint.

Most simple (not composite) bows used for hunting are/were simply waxed. Every hunting bow I've ever had was brown or buff.

I'm sure warbows were painted, if you look at bone boxes link
you will see that it takes stains quite well, so any colour available was probably used – fletchings as well.

thanks everybody