The Armour Archive

I'm looking for ideas in reconstructing those peculiar Italian aventails which seem doubled at the top. Is the mail folded over, made of two separate pieces attached to the same leather, or might there be two sets of vervelles?
(And to paraphrase Eleanor's wonderful line from The Lion in Winter, "Of course he has a baselard, he always has a baselard, we all have baselards! It's 1350 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it.")
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7 ... /f138.item http://manuscriptminiatures.com/3952/10868/


http://effigiesandbrasses.com/3787/3343/

From those three pix alone it looks like there were two methods of hanging that mail curtain. A quite wide camail strap and the mail laid behind it, up and over, stitched in however convenient?

The art style on the faces looks remarkably advanced for a fourteenth-century date... maybe therefore as late as the 1390s? They look like fifteenth century faces, though everything else on the illuminated Bible page looks plausible for fourteenth. That the Detailed Information button informs us the art is Italian work might help clue us properly on the style of the art: if a fifteenth century face is going to appear early anywhere, it'd be Italy.

Since this seems a rare style, maybe it's peculiar to a single decade and a single locality -- some more protection about the head vs. sharps, oddly plain of form for the late fourteenth as mail goes. Questionable whether this bit of extra gave benefit in, or beyond, proportion to its extra weight. Used with cervillières? So, Northern Italy, 1340s?

The BNF attributes the first image to "vers 1350", so c. 1350 give or take a decade. They also give it an origin in Naples, so I wouldn't restrict the double aventail to northern Italy (although their provenance could be wrong). 1340s seems better than 1350s to me.

From the miniatures, I might suspect the purpose is to protect the attachment points for the aventail, but the effigy seems to show this is not the case.