The Armour Archive

[img]http://i9.ebayimg.com/03/i/05/bc/21/b7_1.JPG[/img]

http://cgi.ebay.com/SCA-Armor-Gothic-Fluted-Cap-Pauldrons-Shoulders_W0QQitemZ6591066551QQcategoryZ43217QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

I have never seen anything like these, but then I have not seen as much as you people.

As I said they look very cool.

These look more like gothic tassets that got curved too deeply than shoulder armor. An important point would be just how big are these things? Plate shoulder defenses really should start as something that cups the point of the shoulder -- anything from a spaudler top to a full-on pauldron main plate -- and then spreading above and below the point of the shoulder.

Solid plate should not reach all the way from point of shoulder to neck without some means of either protecting the neck or fixing the plate from being forced sideways into the edge of the neck, for instance a gorget with spring pins fastening the pauldrons on. Articulating the inner portions of the pauldron into lames helps with this and lends greater mobility to the arm.

It's pretty metalwork, but I think it would have been better applied to gothic tassets.

Starting out in SCA fighting, a man can make do without much of anything in the way of shoulder armor for quite a while, as a shield covers the shoulders very well. Hard shoulders become more important in the shieldless weapons forms, which are rather more advanced.

My gut tells me these are an "internal anachronism." Simple spaulders of the 14th century would never have been fluted like this, and conversely, a fluted "gothic" harness of the late 15th century would have full-size articulated pauldrons, not simple spaulders. Pretty, but no sale here.

Klaus

Look in Albrecht Durer's woodcuts, and you will find similar pieces.

(the bottom edge is where the pieces meet in the picture)

Having looked at "Knight, Death and the Devil," and Carpaccio's "Knight in a Landscape" (1520)...mmmaybe. I rescind my earlier assertion that simple spaulders (with lames) are unknown in the late 15th, but I'm still not convinced that these are right. They look like they want to be a pair of Maximilian shoulders, but the shape is wrong to me--not rounded enough--and the fluting is too exaggerated, turning them rather too bat-winged. The flutes should follow the shape, not dictate it.

Love both of those.

I think you will find pauldrons in both 15th&16thC similar to this. In my opinion, the bottom of the pauldron is simply rolled and shaped like this to help make it stronger for our use, more than being an exact copy of a period example.