The first images of mine on this thread related to planes or billboards. These are in effect a single polygon and, whilst they can be sized, bent, twisted etc  being just the one you can not  delete parts of it.(And they are in effect only 2d not 3d--no "thickness")

My screen shot is of a Grid  (In the vertex model room) which could be used as a plain and have deletable polygons.

If you had a plan ai layout of the crown you could extrude it in the Spline moddeler and then curve into shape.

Using the crown black and white image to use in constructing a terain I understand but that this would  then be a true 3d image of a crown is outside my understanding.

bwtr