The Armour Archive

Sean M

bartholomew wrote:... Piotr Ferets Close helm from l'Armee in Paris ...

ooh, I think I saw that one in progress when I visited his shop for a fitting! I think he might like to see a photo of it lined up with all the other original and reproduction armour.

Sean M

I am told that some surviving doublets from the late 16th/early 17th century have shaped pieces of heavy fulled wool cloth pad-stitched between the canvas and the lining in specific places where earlier tailors would probably have used bombast. Susan Payne's article on the slashed satin doublet in P...

Sean M

Great find Gustovic!

Are those guys hiding upper cannons under their sleeves of mail? In the 'armour rack' scene we just have an elbow and a lower cannon and sleeves of mail.

Sean M

Mac reminded me of the B&W painting of a soldier with a purse around his neck which Blaz Berlec found and posted on Photobucket . https://i.pinimg.com/564x/09/a6/36/09a636ceffd9b6f585fb225c68ce108a.jpg It is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, accession number 1778 . They say it is by a Bolognese ...

Sean M

Habeo mantellam cum .v. bottonis et bene pendit! https://bookandsword.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/shoulder_buttoned_cloak_lowres.png?w=400&h=428 I think this will be a good walking cloak. I might add a bit of fabric at the left side, there was not quite enough to make it 120 cm long all around. The...

Sean M

Elina (Neulakko) recently hypothesed that Nockert was wrong after all in removing the red V from the cloak and placing it on the hood: "Now I am inclined to think that V would, after all, belong on the cloak. I believe that had enforced the shoulder seam opening at the side where the cloak was open...

Sean M

Mac, is this painting by Domenico di Bartolo, Sienese (d. 1446) in your Pinterest? It shows breeches with an eliptical gusset between the legs.

Sean M

The bloggers at Historical Textiles have some closeup photos of historical metalwork in the back rooms of Swedish collections including a sallet, shears, scissors, and their hourglass gauntlet with the pieces of the fingers riveted together. https://historicaltextiles.org/40-2018-the-hard-core-metal...

Sean M

Great find Ernst! The paunce of plates opens up the back, but it is not so clear how the reredos opens.

And thanks to Bertus for bringing up the lost effigy.

Sean M

I decided to stop dithering and cut my cloth today and yesterday, finished the neck opening/dart/shoulder opening, realized that I had done it wrong-side-out so the cloak would open at my left side, undid it, and fixed it. So far I am pretty satisfied, although the neck ended up a bit wide again. Th...

Sean M

The oldest I have seen is the one made for Bashford Dean. I wonder how photos of it got into the wild before the Met added it to their online catalogue? I am too poor to have a collection of old museum catalogues and auction listings.

Sean M

3. Item, que nul ne face juppons de soye ne de camelot, s’il n’y a bon contre endroit de toille tainte; et qui autrement le fera, il paiera dix sols parisis d’amande, dont les six sols parisis seront au Roy et les quatre aux gardes dudit mestier; et si sera l’euvre descousue et baillée à remender à...

Sean M

Thanks Mac! I think we can wait, we are just happy to watch you making armour again!

The guy at Manning Imperial made a version of the grand bascinet in Venice, staring at pictures and deciding what you like and what you would do differently could be another good distraction.

Sean M

What do you all like to use for drawing patterns on heavy fulled wool which is not very abrasion-resistant? I have limited success on the latest piece with pencils and with tailor's chalk, but maybe I should try a very new piece rather than shaving an old piece to be sharp again ... I now have a cop...

Sean M

I don't see anything in those drawings and prints specifically which makes me concerned either ... I just try not to make my life harder than it needs to be, like using redrawings of 18th century prints of things which no longer exist in my own research. Because that effigy is so close to the place ...

Sean M

Ok, I had another look at the Pisani-Dossi MS. Some of these show all the lames of the fauld. I would read the buckles as associated with the cuirass, because any overgarment light enough to let you see that would not be a good choice for closing with straps. http://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/1/15/...

Sean M

I found an inventory from Rimini in April 1439 with a clamidi (light mantle in the ancient style) of black cloth lined with linen cloth of the same colour ( di panno nero foderata di panno di lino dello stesso colore : Elosa Tosi Brandi, Abbigliamento e Società a Rimini nel XV Secolo, page 72). With...

Sean M

Or, perhaps to keep them from just wearing their jockeys or y-fronts under their hosen. The presented pattern will work.. more of less, but it doesen't really accord well with the overall high quality of their group. I can't judge their clothing because its not my period, but they sure have a good ...

Sean M

Sean, I've studied the Fiore MSs in the highest Res available and I cannot agree that all the armoured figures are wearing back closing corazza. I think some of them have coat armours that buckle in the back. Its very frustrating in how little detail the images are rendered. Kel, I am worried becau...

Sean M

Hi Mac, well, if it were easy someone else would have already done it! I think you have made a pretty good case that there is more going on with the various mid-15th-century, brief-sized types than we thought, and that even in the early 14th century these may have had more than two pieces (or two pe...

Sean M

Hi John,

I am touched that I am walking in the footsteps of earlier scholars! I hope people find the new photo helpful.

Its certainly possible that the real armour had another set of hinges under the arms and that the sculptor decided it was too awkward a space to work in.

Sean M

Mac, there is a version of your working version of type V in the Compagnie of St. George men's clothing guide. They lump all late 15th century drawstring breeches into one type, but it might be worth using a scrap of cotton to try their pattern once and see why they made some choices. Even in the gl...

Sean M

Hi Mac,

that is it. I wish I had brought my pocket flashlight and my magnifying glass and my whole kit and caboodle to check what is going on under the arm, but I am on vacation.

Reredos would be a good name for a three-part or four-part backplate with vertical hinges.

Sean

Sean M

One of the guardians on a sarcophagus in the Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna, first decade of the 15th century. https://bookandsword.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/img_20180929_120859762_back_museo_civico_medievale_bologna.jpg?w=758&h=1008 As you can see, he seems to have hinges running up and down o...

Sean M

I agree that it might be worth seeing how these stretch after a few hours. It is hard, because cheap modern linen or muslin probably stretches differently than most medieval linen (and I don't think we know what they used for the drawstring, do we?) I will be applying for teaching jobs in the next f...

Sean M

Thanks Tom! The links to the first article are weird, but it seems two pages of text and the rest B&W redrawings. Here is the written part https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/jbksak1889a/0358/image I will report what the second article says about date when I have worked through it, so far they ...

Sean M

I have been thinking about demi-pourpoints, petticoats, and chamoise jerkins again ... is there a book or article which talks about when in his reign this was made? I hear there are two manuscripts and the leaves are mixed up, but 16th century armour is science fiction to me ("in the far future, the...

Sean M

Tasha K-M has heard that the golden gown of Queen Margareta in Uppsala is lined in blue linen. Does anyone have the publications to confirm that? This article mentions three linens, two blues and an unbleached http://forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/garments/Margrethe/Margrethe.html There seems to be...

Sean M

However... I feel compelled to address the question of whether braies were ever just wrapped around a belt. I have not seen any evidence for it. I know.. there are some modern reenactors that say is works, but that's not what we are seeing in art. ... So far as I can tell, when these Type I braies ...

Sean M

This brings us to another issue. If one is to try to support his hosen by tying them to his braies, the waistline of the braies must be up at the "blue jeans waist" and not at the "hiphugger waist". This is at odds with what we are seeing in the majority of underwear images from the turn of the Cen...

Sean M

The eliptical gusset in John's pattern seems like it would lend itself to doubling that area for modesty and absorbency.

Sean M

Also, we English-speakers researching the late 14th century do not have the massive amounts of documents which are available for 16th century research. There is a lot of colourful clothing in the Tacuinum illustration for vestis lintea but I would be a lot more confident to have a nice court record ...

Sean M

Very interesting! Once I learned that linen was mostly undyed in period it changed my SCA world view with all our brightly colored linen outfits. Mac, any chance those representations of Blue braies were colored in by later "puritans" editing out the what they thought were naughty bits? Hi Johann, ...

Sean M

Thank you Mac! The first dyer who found a way to colour linen a dark blue or black which would survive washing must have made a killing. The fragment of a brigandine from a putlog hole at Schloss Tirol has a layer of red linen next to the plates. The interlining of white linen is next to the yellow ...

Sean M

I checked the book by Ruth M. Anderson which Susan Reed cites, but it just gives an English paraphrase and a shelf number in Seville. Unfortunately sometimes archival researchers succumb to the weakness of the flesh and just summarize what they are reading in their native language rather than copy t...

Re: Study Session 2018 - November 10, 2018

16th/17th c Doublets with Wool Cloth Padding

Re: Late Fourteenth Century Arming Garments II: The Upper Bo

Re: Late Fourteenth Century Arming Garments II: The Upper Bo

Re: Thinking Out Loud: Bocksten Cloaks

Re: Thinking Out Loud: Bocksten Cloaks

Re: braies question

Hourglass Gauntlet in Sweden and Other Photos

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: Thinking Out Loud: Bocksten Cloaks

Re: Multi-section corrazina: period or modern?

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: Mac's blog

Re: Thinking Out Loud: Bocksten Cloaks

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: braies question

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: braies question

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: braies question

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: Backplates before 1410?

Re: braies question

Re: Inventario Illuminado of Charles V

Inventario Illuminado of Charles V

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: braies question

Re: braies question

Re: braies question

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen

Re: A Use for Dyed Linen