The Armour Archive

Which one? The link goes to a page of a bunch of maks?


What is this for? SCA? Dress helm? What? It will make a difference in the manufacture ability of the helm.

I have to tell you -- regardless of your intentions with the helmet, it will look like... well, ungood.

It would be at *best* a total fantasy piece, and would simply not fit with any type of medieval armour that I can think of.

You didn't say if you are in the SCA or if this is for SCA combat or something else, but unless it is your intention to try to recreate a modern (and I stress that -- we don't know the provenance of the mask or its historicity) Ghanan warrior or something (who, I doubt, wore much armour in the Western sense)....

If you want a reproduction of the mask, get or make a reproduction of the mask and hang it on the wall, but don't try to shoehorn it Frankenstein-like onto armour.


Effingham

a good reproduction can be made trying to modify a cerimonial mask for combat would be uber expencive. do you have a picture of the paticular mask you want reproduced?

... But many masks carry a lot of spiritual and/or religious significance.

It may be considered disrepectful to use something like a mask in a manner it is not intended for.

Short answer is Yes, that mask could be made in Metal.

*IF* I were to desire to do such a thing, I would make the mask a separate item that went over my bargrill.

-+G

The answer, Reckless, is yes.

For that, you should probably use a leather overlay, and attach it to a low profile helm attached close to your face. At least some African cultures used leather for arms and armor. I have a Massai shield on my wall to prove it. The Mara is a long way from Ghana, though.

I think it would be cool.

You will encounter a certain amount of friction on the helm. Decide whether or not it's worth it. It might not be.

If it is, get it done right, not OK, but perfect. West Africa has a great deal of written history and iconography. One of the first (if not THE first) universities in the world was in West Africa. Make sure that all your I's are dotted and all your T's are crossed. Document at least one Ghanain (sp?) warrior in Europe between 600 and 1600 AD, and nail that down as hard as you can. Nothing stops a second rate authenticity maven like good, solid scholarship. You could be a walking combination education/smackedown.

And be prepared to give up the quest if the academic stuff says "No." Ghana may be too far away for a soldier to be in Europe during the period.

Many African cultures had soldiers who fought in Europe, the trick is getting the cites lined up.

And let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help.

f

Reckless,

This is important, because of migrations and the length of time of the sca's period.

Which tribe of Ghana do you need to do?

f

A touch of googlage makes it appear to be a Baluba or BaLuba mask. A mask from Ghana inspired by the Congolese Luba tribe. The Luba Empire was founded in 1585 so the empire at least, is period. Now to pin down origins of the mask and European contact.

I can forsee brass with etching and reposse. I think it would look pretty swanky actually.

I think there are two, and onlt two, ways this helmet can go. Swanky or skanky. I'm guessing that Swanky will cost some big bucks but might end up pretty cool as a one off. Skanky and it would be better not to have even tried.

RecklessAgony wrote:
i find either story a little convient.

With the added minus that both your source pics show their subjects in European armor.

But with a specific cite, that trade route could be your answer.

Are you sure about the western spelling of the tibal name. I am getting hits with the "Lamiin" tribe being active in Mongolia, but not in Africa. I am finding the Akan, the Ashanti, the Fanti, the Ewe, the Ga-Adangbe, the Mole-Dagbani, the Guan, the Gurma and the Mande-Busanga being present in Ghana today.

You're looking at one of the tribes from the Songhai, right? The time period that everybody is talking about would make that so. The actual Ghana empire seems to have fallen in the 13th century at the hands of Masa Musa, who appears to have been a great leader of the Mali empire. That could be your connection, if you were going with the Ghana empire. You could very plausibly be a soldier who left one year to guard a caravan, and later found out that there was no empire to return to. The Ashanti empire seems to have been a little northerly to be in Ghana, but I am only just around in my pitiful library.

If you picked a later date, anything after 1481 gives you the possibility of portraying somebody who came north on a trading ship. Many of those ships were slavers, but there were also ships trading in Ivory, Gold, Sorghum and Bananas,though how they kept Bananas from spoiling I don't know.

I found one source that said an arab writer named Al Yaqubi wrote a bit about the Ghana empire in the ninth century, but I don't know how to find that source.

I gotta tell you, it seems like the Gold Coast is kind of a source black hole. I am finding a lot of sources that say "these people traded with them" but little about Ghana itself.

I really know nothing about this. Given the prevalence of trade cites from about the ninth century onwards, I think you could easily do a caravan guard.

This is so cool. Let us know how it works out.

Please don't just drop off the world like so many folks who come here to check things out do. This is a really interesting subject.

f

edited to remove double post

I don't know WHAT you're reading, but St. Maurice was part of the Theban legion, and was martyred in the third century.

The reason he's depicted in that armour is the same reason you see knights in armour in crucifixion scenes.


Effingham

RecklessAgony wrote:chief NAU gna from ghana is actually a relative of mine

Man, that is convenient. I keep getting emails about my million dollar bank account reward money in Ghana...you think the chief could help me out, use a little chiefdom muscle and put that money in my paypal account

The Archive has a serious case of stick-up-the-ass, sometimes.


Make your helmet. Enjoy it, fight in it.

I can see about half a dozen ways to translate that helmet to steel and make it look badass, and build a suit around it. I can sketch them out to give you ideas, if you like.

And just think of the awesome looking weapons you'll get to use!

Yeah, damn me for thinking in terms of authenticity and reality.

Was that a helmet design or a mask for some civil or religious function? If a mask, it shouldn't be a helmet. Especially not if it has some religious function.

Stick up my ass indeed.


Effingham

just a note of caution. If your persona were in europe, and NOT a slave, and ALLOWED to roam free, and allowed to carry weapons and armour, they would not be of your home land. More likely they would be the arms and armour of the society around you.

InsaneIrish wrote:just a note of caution. If your persona were in europe, and NOT a slave, and ALLOWED to roam free, and allowed to carry weapons and armour, they would not be of your home land. More likely they would be the arms and armour of the society around you.

Subsaharan slavery or postsaharan slavery?

Durasteel Corporation wrote:
Subsaharan slavery or postsaharan slavery?

does it make a difference?

Effingham wrote:...Yeah, damn me for thinking in terms of authenticity and reality.

Your words, not mine.

The archive likes "piling on" and blowing things *way* out of proportion. You'd think this was somehow different or more heinous than greatsword vikings and katana celts, norman nasal helmets turned into full head coverings, or valsgard helmets with soupcan knees, roman legionaries fighting french crusaders, or any of the other thousand compromises, fantasy interpretations and atrocities we see on the archive every day. Get a grip.

InsaneIrish wrote:just a note of caution. If your persona were in europe, and NOT a slave, and ALLOWED to roam free, and allowed to carry weapons and armour, they would not be of your home land. More likely they would be the arms and armour of the society around you.

What on earth are you talking about? Medieval Europeans were quite willing to accept the idea of African nobility. Slavery and race isn't even on the table as an issue yet. A given European of a given nationality might suspect an African traveler of being an uncouth, uncivilized savage, but he would be just as suspicious that people from other european nationalities were just as uncouth, uncivilized and savage. They were equal opportunity offenders, as it were.
The issue to the medieval mind is whether the man is Christian or pagan, and that makes all the difference.

When you say "the kingdom", are you speaking of the kingdom of Ghana, or a kingdom within the boundaries of the the modern country of Ghana?

Destichado wrote:What on earth are you talking about? Medieval Europeans were quite willing to accept the idea of African nobility. Slavery and race isn't even on the table as an issue yet. A given European of a given nationality might suspect an African traveler of being an uncouth, uncivilized savage, but he would be just as suspicious that people from other european nationalities were just as uncouth, uncivilized and savage. They were equal opportunity offenders, as it were.
The issue to the medieval mind is whether the man is Christian or pagan, and that makes all the difference.

Sorry, I was operating under the information that he posted on the "I want to be..." forum where he specifically stated he wanted to be a "freed" slave in europe and a sell sword.

However, subtract all the slavery bit, my statement still stands that if living in Europe as a European, he would not be wearing armour and clothing of his homeland, he would assimilate into the clothing and armour of the current society that he resides in.

InsaneIrish wrote:

Durasteel Corporation wrote:
Subsaharan slavery or postsaharan slavery?

does it make a difference?

Huge difference.

1. England was a backwater.

2. Clothes wear out, and slaves don;t bring armour and weapons with them - people possessing armour and weapon in had tend not to remain slaves.

3. When items wore out, or need to be procured, on procures the objects one finds around them. The craftsmen you would deal with would not make odd things they did not know how to, they worked within their own tradition.

4. Invariably, when Africans appear in Medieval art (mostly in Italy, because Italy, Spain and Southern France is where most of them ended up), they are invariably dressed in clothing like the rest of everybody else around them.

Not to burst a bubble, but you are creating a fantasy, not recreating history. The real history of Africans in Europe is fascinating and compelling - and I think we owe it to the people who went through it to tell their actual story, rather than making one up.

Reckless, I'd say they were trying to give good advice...

Look, are you interested in History, or not?

Nobody is patronizing you that I have seen, I was just trying to give you factual data.

If you want to emphasize the African equipment, then portray a native of Ghana in Ghana in the Middle ages - Ghana has a rich and interesting history. NOBODY in the SCA is going to enforce the rule that you have to pretend to be in Europe- the only rules they ever enforce are safety rules.

One of the rules of the SCA that creates fantasy portrayals is the insistence on the "events' occurring in Medieval Europe - for God's sake, you have Vikings chatting with Elizabethans- a complete temporal impossibility. Worse yet, in made up SCA kingdoms - but then insisting that people have to be accurate to Geography.

When you lay it out plain, it is ridiculous. It would encourage *accurate* interesting portrayals to leave out the Geographic insistence entirely, and approach the whole damned thing as a timeline. Unbless you can show me the Meridies on a Medieval European map, or any other made-up kingdom.