The Armour Archive

I have been looking for some kind of timeline (preferably illustrated) of the Burgeonet helmet.

I am working toward an early landsknect rig (1510--1520 or so) and want to get a Burgeonet for fighting. Since I want to try and do this right, I don't want to order a Burgeonet that may very well be 50-100yrs off of the time I am portraying.

Does anyone have a resource I can get/use for Burgeonets?

Thanks in advance

I have been doing some fair amount of research into this very subject. Take a look at this thread here..

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=51248

As far as I can tell, the burgonet went through a rapid evolutionary development between 1515 and about 1535. It appears to me that the burgonet evolved from the simple skull caps that were so popular from around 1480 and going on into the 16th century. At some point in time (1500??) they started adding small plates to the chin straps on the skull caps to protect them. As the skullcap increased in size to cover the head more, these started to get in the way of putting the helmet on and taking it off. Sometime in the 1520's to fix this they started to cut hemisphearical cutouts on the sides of the helmet and hinge them at the top. In this way you could "open" up the helmet to make it easier to get on and off. By 1530 these helmets had rudimentary bill and back extension. Also at this time you start to see the tri-combed early proto-burgonets. Before this the helmets either had no crest or had just a crease where the crest would be. By the end of the 1530's the full burgonet with cheek pieces, bill, crest, etc. were being made.

So in your case an early Landsknecht from 1510 to 1520 would have just worn a skullcap type helmet possibly with protecting plates on the chin strap. If you want a full burgonet that everyone is familliar with, you will have to do a later post 1535 personna. Hope this helps,

yep, that is very much what I was looking for. Looks like I going later period than I have hoped.

Jason do you know of anywhere that has a collection of burgonet pics with relative dates on them?

No. I have been trying to match woodcuts and paintings to particular styles in order to get a better date on them. I don't have much trust for the dates museums put on the helmets, at least for the early versions. If you come across any though, I would be very interested.

The earliest version is about 1510.

I found a couple of interesting sites with multiple pictures of Burgonets and dates.

One is in German:
http://www.hermann-historica-ohg.de/auk ... 46_1_D.txt

And the other english:
http://www.allenantiques.com/Main-Collection.html