The Armour Archive

Sean M

Thanks Tom and Mark. My current camera is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ10. It seems to have trouble in low light without the flash, but maybe there are settings which can reduce that? Focusing on objects in low light closeup can also be a problem.

Sean M

The other problem with those knees is the vertical creases on the narrow lames above and below. It would be interesting to make up a pair of close cuisses with the front plate of lames, like long tassets in the 16th and 17th century, and see how it works. Do 15th century cuisses with a main plate an...

Sean M

http://images.bridgemanimages.com/api/1.0/image/600wm.IND.2426110.7055475/113063.jpg Its from a retable of the Virgin and St. George by a Catalan painter, Lluis Borrassa (alternate spellings: Luis or Lluís or Borrassà) who seems to have lived between c.1360 and 1425 and learned his trade at Siena. ...

Sean M

I am not completely satisfied with my current camera, and have been thinking about how and where to find a better one. The thing is, I don't have any photography training (I should probably take an evening or summer course) and people who visit museums and churches and ruins have special needs: - Sm...

Sean M

You might have explained this already, but I would be interested to hear why you and your client decided to blacken the harness. Surface finishes are hard to study, and my own work is focused on the 14th century south of the Alps. I don't know what evidence we have for how fine German armour was tre...

Sean M

Hi Scott, Thanks for your thoughts. I have fixed the links (wish the KHM site was easier to search by catalogue number and that the closeup of those gauntlets was up today). I don't 'speak' late 15th century armour so I can't talk about this style in detail. I can think of gauntlets, knees, elbows, ...

Sean M

Mac's big thread on his St. Florian project has me thinking about something about late 15th century German "gothic" armour which is hard to put into words. Today we often think of this style as intimidating. All kinds of film armourers use it for costuming bad guys, from Lord of the Rings to Khotine...

Sean M

Ernst, you might love this: in trecento Italian, a front-opening armour is a corazza fenduta dinanzi . So Joinville turned the opening ( le fendu , "the split") towards himself and the back towards the enemy. Its not the French grammar that I learned in school, but Joinville was living a bit closer ...

Sean M

You're welcome, Mac and Ernst. I have a feeling that once we know what to look for and what words they used, evidence for polishing will start to appear. For all we know the English taxed imports of Milan emery, or some Dutch firm specializing in it has left archives. If they could call stones files...

Sean M

I have never found any references to emery used as a native stone. Are you sure it's emery? Are you sure the stones are intended to by used just as they are, and not first pulverized? Can you tell what "shapes" the stone are? I imagine that emery was exported as stones, rather than as powder, so it...

Sean M

The long deep scratched along the face hem are probably left over from the first process. The whole helmet probably looked like that at some point. The scratches are way too long to have been produced by a wheel. They are either from a file or one of those sticks like we see in the Hausbuch . Some ...

Sean M

Somewhere there is a description of armour in the Royal Armies being polished by the garrison of the tower with ground bricks. Make All Sure has a description of the 18th century garrison of Malta polishing their muskets, swords, and armour with sand and vinegar when they ran out of oil and emery. J...

Sean M

Thanks a lot Mac! The center back point of the Charles de Blois seems higher than the other six, and is off-centre. I don't remember whether it is leather but I am away from my books. https://bookandsword.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/inside_of_charles_de_blois_1364.jpg You posted some pictures of you...

Sean M

Those are very sexy couters! Thanks for the photos of different stages of cutting and polishing.

Sean M

Randall, are you thinking of rigging up something like Bertus' lendenier so I don't mess up the good doublet with eyelets that turn out to be in the wrong spot? Not sure if that would save work, relative to just experimenting (or sew some temporary laces inside the doublet, mark the spot which 'work...

Sean M

The cuirass of the armour of Ulrich IX von Matsch (Churburg S19) still has its central front strap covered in cloth. There are fragments of something rich and red around the eyelets, but elsewhere all that remains is a 1:1 weave in natural colour. See Carlo's Churburg book plates 72 and 73 for a clo...

Sean M

Folks who are interested in this might want to pull out Carlo's Churburg book and spend a while staring at the face opening of a barbuta in plate 94. I can't 'read' the scratches because I don't have experience polishing steel, but they might be helpful at showing intermediate stages of work the sam...

Sean M

I guess another question that I could have asked better is, does anyone have a preference between angled suspension like http://www.revivalclothing.com/images/articles/Arming/arming05.jpg and straight up-and-down suspension like https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cBvfeqJYtao/UYb1MoXXtJI/AAAAAAAAA44/...

Sean M

Does anyone know the source of the "photograph taken in the 1930s" which Toby cites at 43:52 of his Operator's Guide video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAIQPsgZWY People here know how to contact him, but I don't. I can find the things which require academic libraries and foreign languages, but ...

Sean M

Here is one of the images. It's of the armet when they were conserving it and had removed the brow reinforce and under it was original polish. period_polish-small.jpg Ok. The article by James Mann has smaller B&W photos from just after he had taken down, cleaned, and sorted the armour. He states th...

Sean M

To make it an acceptable cross market marking system you will need a quality oversight group that can issue a certification; Otherwise there will be "faked" markings for sub quality items---just like we see today for other products. And we will have counterfeit items anyway. Yes, even with powerful...

Sean M

Sakakibara Kōzan has a detailed description of the forging and especially the laquering from the customer's perspective, so he may say something about the polishing of armour. My only copy is on paper in another country. Really wish they could sort out the copyright issues and reprint the translatio...

Sean M

Some people think that cuisses and poleyns of plate often had cloth linings from the late 14th century. Early 14th century cuisses seem to be of cloth or leather over small plates. Claude Blair's suggestion ( European Armour p. 63) was that the cloth or leather foundation of the cuisse continues und...

Sean M

Several people cite a "near-mirror polish" on parts of the Madonna della Grazzie armours which were covered by other plates. For example, Toby reproduced photos in the slides for his "An Operator's Guide" lecture, and anything he says about armour is worth taking seriously. These claims seem to go b...

Sean M

I think I remember Sean M saying something about having seen references to "cross filing" or perhaps "cross polishing" of armor. I wonder if this is what we're seeing here. Mac Mac, My working definition of the verb traversare in the archive is "to cross-polish." But the problem is that my explanat...

Sean M

Thanks for the link to that thread, Sean! I had more or less forgotten about it. Mac You are welcome! I spent the last few months thinking a lot about polishing as part of a project. Finding and organizing information is my trade ... I just have to be careful not to spend so much time and energy do...

Sean M

Sean, In the first part of the Der Blaupließter video, at around 11:40, the polisher takes the rough-ground blades, anoints them with an oil and emery paste and applies them to a wheel. I don't have nearly enough German to tell if they say what the wheel is made of. Can you tell? Mac I am having tr...

Sean M

This next one is 1370-1380 and we see a mix of the mid thigh length with the higher cut at the groin. Still from a summary look leans to the mid thigh. http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4365/16807/ That one has an interesting detail. Have a look at this closeup: https://bookandsword.files.wordpress.c...

Sean M

Thanks a lot Randall! Don't forget to back things up in case of power outages. I just felt like I sometimes run off researching things to the point that nobody can help, so I wanted to start a practical thread. And since I don't have the budget to buy a lot of extra wool of the quality that makes go...

Sean M

Has anyone ever seen another bascinet with a ridge running ear-to-ear as well as front-to back? Nothing comes to mind (although there is a fluted bascinet on another panel, and at least one survives). My best guess is that the silversmith goofed and applied the crest in the wrong place to the wrong...

Sean M

People who missed the Arms and Armour Forum thread on polishing will want to check out the videos Der Blaupließter (the blue-polisher) and The grinding musem in Solingen - Schleifermuseum Balkhauser Kotten - Fine grinding and polishing . I think that the polishing guilds polished all kinds of differ...

Sean M

I guess my question is at 1360 is it really common amongst noble and knightly or is it really the trend setters, you know the freaky fashions on the catwalk stuff still. Yes that guys seems to be having a good time hope he was not too cold.... I know its exam season in the USA and you have a lot of...

Sean M

Sean Powell wrote:
tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.
Why is this 'clearly'?

Pretty sure he was being ironic, because almost anything that a sculptor or painter can do has been called "an artistic representation of mail." So he and everyone else are supposed to think "that is silly."

Sean M

Charlotte's and Mac's argument is that your hosen should be long enough that nobody is likely to see your breeches unless you roll the hosen down. That matches the vast majority of the evidence I have seen, and it also gives us the logic that they were using. So of all the solutions available around...

Sean M

As I apply the "finishing touches" to the doublet, and boxes of steel start to arrive, its time to think about the points at the waist. I agree with Charlotte J and Tasha that you should wear long hosen with a short doublet. The doublet of Charles de Blois has seven pairs of points sewn inside the w...

Re: Cameras for Armour Tourism

Re: Lets discuss: Segmented cuisses Italy 1370-85

Interesting Catalan Image With Back of Cuirass

Cameras for Armour Tourism

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: The Aesthetics of German Gothic Armour

The Aesthetics of German Gothic Armour

Re: Joinville's gambesons

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Dusting off the cobwebs

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Silk/Velvet Covered Straps?

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: How to record if armour is heat treated?

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: How to deal with floating knees?

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Hinged cheeks?

Re: Traditional Armor Finishing Processes

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Re: Hinged cheeks?

Re: Suspending Hosen and Cuisses

Suspending Hosen and Cuisses