The Armour Archive

James Arlen Gillaspie

Oh, c'mon. You want a manica with a built-in gauntlet? I got it right here.

James Arlen Gillaspie

There's the Musee Massena in Nice. I'd appreciate photos of this harness in particular (don't forget the back!); I'm still trying to figure out if any of it is real.

http://www.nice.fr/mairie_nice_174.html

James Arlen Gillaspie

Something that, to my knowledge, has not been much talked about, is consistency of materials. The making of iron and steel was more art than science, and the delaminations so typically seen on real armour are often evidence of a spot where the forge welding of the stuff that made up the plates didn'...

James Arlen Gillaspie

You need some frontal views.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I suppose I had better 'fess up to the fact that Marx Reichlich worked at the end of the 15th c., but apparently did a bit of research into the style for his painting.

James Arlen Gillaspie

How concerned are you with authenticity, and what's your price range? I've taken measurements (I was particularly concerned with the shape of the poleyn and the spacing and positioning of the articulating rivets) off a real Italian leg c. 1450, but have never had a good excuse (i.e. no one has commi...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Check out St. Maurice (I presume) in his PINK KB. At least, on my monitor. Also, note the creaseless knees.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Poleyns that are rather bullet shaped, with a point but no crease, do appear on effigies and in artwork in the Germanies in the first half of the 15th c. They are usually shown creased, though. Check out the effigies of Graf Moritz von Oldenburg d. 1420, Peter von Stettenberg d. 1428, Albrecht of Me...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I believe the castle has a fair amount of armour, though not well displayed. I expect you were going there, anyway. The earlier the armour, the better, in my opinion.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I think your hypothesis the most reasonable. The model for Durer's 'Knight, Death, and the Devil' doesn't look like paint.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Do you have a yahoo account? You could put the pic's on flikr.com, which will let you put big photos and over a thousand photos on line. There are a number of good members of the 'armouries' pool.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hmm, I wasn't aware the R.A. had 16th c. greaves on their 'gothic'. I don't know why they didn't just have Billy Radford make some and label them as restorations on the tag.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Vesey dates the Alexander Stewart effigy to about 1420. When I was working on a Jeanne d'Arc film project a decade ago, I went through everything I could find pretty thoroughly. There seemed a number of brasses that showed something like the Pistoia altarpiece depiction of small horizontal lames, pa...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Whole lotta Winkelmeyer in that Spanish stuff. The 'Max' with the switched legs has its pauldrons on forwards, but the right one has come apart.

James Arlen Gillaspie

This is the 'gothic' equestrian at the Royal Armouries, UK. Highly unusual, though.

James Arlen Gillaspie

The SCA marshalate, bless their souls, have not seemed to get too bent out of shape when the fanplates of heat treated couters and poleyns have snapped off, but my big nightmare has been that a heat treated helm will fail and all tempered armour will be banned from SCAdian combat. It may be a silly ...

James Arlen Gillaspie

You've made some very pretty stuff. But when it comes to the helm... Oh, dear. Did anyone tell you anything about welding 1095? Or 1075 (1075/1095... what's up with that?)? I'm afraid you'd better start over. People who do heat treating vary considerably in their knowledge; they are usually very goo...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Giles, I cannot warn you strongly enough about NOT using 1095 for a helm. Cracks are ALWAYS much longer than they appear. Even with a bainitic microstructure, I would be deeply leery of it, and the consequences of catastrophic failure make it unacceptable. Pieces could literally fly out of it fast e...

James Arlen Gillaspie

I used to hate fighting guys that big when they were charging. After I bagged 'em, I had a couple of them fall on me!

James Arlen Gillaspie

Much of the real stuff I've seen, especially the run of the mill items, follows the 'ten foot rule'. Does it look pretty much OK at three meters? Good enough.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Yes, 1050 or lower. As you increase carbon, you increase brittleness without any real advantage.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I think I would rephrase my question as; is the ruler shown in the foreground of the Dijon grand bacinet 20 cm. long?

James Arlen Gillaspie

How in the world did you manage to post such big (over the 100KB limit) pictures? Also, do you know what length the scale is in the grand bacinet pictures? I can't quite make it out. Centimeters obviously, but I'm not sure how many make up the measuring stick.

James Arlen Gillaspie

What do you make of this painting by Petrus Christus (Death of the Virgin, in the Timken Museum), dated c. 1460-65? He was dead by 1476.

James Arlen Gillaspie

My German dictionary just flat-out defines the word as "forgery, falsification, fake".

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hello, Russ! Nice to have you aboard, again. Here's a composed harness in Paris that I am interested in because it has affinities with certain things shown in the Thun Sketchbook and some of Lorenz Helmschmid's later work, especially the helm and breastplate (why didn't I take pictures of the legs?)...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Alright, I'm after high-def full shots and close-ups of the details on these. They're in the Army Museum in Paris (Les Invalides), and are fully enclosed foot-combat suits like the famous c. 1520 harness of Henry VIII. Most people have never heard of them. Hopefully they don't have them displayed wi...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Wouldn't you know it would just HAVE to be the upper cannon that is missing from the Chartres arm. How on earth did all of Northern Europe manage to do such a pristine clean sweep?

James Arlen Gillaspie

Umm... this picture was taken in the British Museum, in 1997. No mistake about it; I knew where I was at.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Forget what I said about the hinges on the Paris arm. Even if the 'door' had been inset enough to cover up the cut out bit for an internal hinge, there should be tell-tale rivet holes (filled or not) to show where it had been attached. Clearly external hinges are correct.

James Arlen Gillaspie

Hmm... I was bothered by how poorly the rolled edges on the lips of the cuff of the Paris arm lined up, having just looked at the ones Klaus posted from the Met. Perhaps unnecessarily bothered. Still, the pic of the strap side of the cuff doesn't show how off the lineup is. I could swear I have a pi...

James Arlen Gillaspie

Here's one I did awhile back... for somebody else. It made wish I had one. I did wear the parts a few times before I had to turn them over, though.

James Arlen Gillaspie

What sort of documentary evidence do we have for modified armour for the tournament c. 1400? It has occured to me that that lame could be a working life modification.

James Arlen Gillaspie

I'm far from sure the hinged 'door' on the lower cannon on that arm went with the main lame of the cannon. Going through my pic's of the piece, the rolled edges come together in odd ways. Also, how do we know that the external hinges are original? The gauntlet cuffs on the 'Sigismund' gothic, for in...

James Arlen Gillaspie

The Wallace Collection may have relaxed its photography ban recently. Worth checking. Also, when you were in San Marino, you wouldn't have happened to see the German 'gothic' gauntlet(s) that were on one of their postage stamps, would you?