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Question on Halberds Carlos Helm
Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 12:49 pm
by Gilebert
Greetings!
I have built and like the last of the helm Kits that Halberds had.
I built the Carlos Helm
Does anyone have an idea if this is actually datable to a region/period?
Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 3:36 pm
by Gerhard von Liebau
A helmet such as this would be broadly seen throughout western Europe at the turn of the 13th century. Dates given to depictions of various sorts from Italy and Germany that I can think of with similar helmets (obviously without the slat back!) would be roughly 1175-1200. I can pull up some images later, but it's most likely that Ernst would come up with them more easily...
-Gerhard
Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 4:48 pm
by Konstantin the Red
As Gerhard said, in that era, pothelms grew face protection. Not so much Viking spectacles as an array of bars for the minimal sort of face protection, to full coverage of the face with something pretty solid, as you see in your kit and pic. In a word, a ventail -- a plate with sights above and breaths drilled in.
The slat back is an SCA safety mod.
Next to come was a solid plate about the nape and base of the skull, in about the next generation.
It is notable during this period that pot helms developed incrementally, as if they were gradually growing to cover more of the head with time. They started with a blown-out version of the Norman conical, built in various ways, but being shaped more like a gumdrop than the pointed shape of the Norman, or the twisted-forward point of the Phrygian, contemporary with the pots. They then became increasingly cylindrical, and spaced out even farther from the wearer's skull in the "saltshaker" pot. These enlarged tops are not very popular in the SCA as they are larger targets and easier to tag with a stick. IRL, they were spaced armor, and highly effective against the 12th-c. sword.
Then faceplates like yours came along, and the nape plates after. The Maciejowski-era bucket helm was now essentially complete, and the barrel- or Topf-helm evolved out of that in about another generation, to be ascendant for decades thereafter while growing smaller in the top cap before the cerveillière early bascinet-plus-great helm teamup came along.