The Armour Archive

Here are pictures of a doublet that I have made. It was based on several pics from the 1450's.

It was completely, 100% hand-sewn. Made with a linen lining, 100% cotton batting and red wool for the outer. The linen lining was sewn with linen thread. The quilting was done with silk thread (au ver a soie 100/3). This garment took approx. 200 hours of work.

(side note: the white lines you may see were from chalk lines - they did rub off)

Enjoy!

THe upper arms. ARe they just two layers of fabric as they appear? (or three, maybe?) And otherwise absent of any of the padding that is evidenced elsewhere?

Maeryk

Ooh. Aah.

Maeryk wrote:THe upper arms. ARe they just two layers of fabric as they appear? (or three, maybe?) And otherwise absent of any of the padding that is evidenced elsewhere?

Maeryk

Hello Maeryk,

Yes, the upper arms are (per the customer's and armourer's request) are simply a layer of wool and layer of linen. The rest of the garment has varying layers of internal padding (from 2 to 5 layers depending on location, armour proximity etc).

regards,
Greta

Thanks! It truly is gorgeous!

Kinda what I want my lovely wife to "whip up" for me.. but mine will probably look more German.

Gorgeous though.

Maeryk

Thank you. I learned a tremendous amount while working on it. I'm thinking about making others like it (only using a sewing machine for internal stitching this time).

Muriel, this seems to be to be a rather remarkable garment.

Am I correct that this garment is now not seeing active use? If it is being used by a practicing man at arms, I should like to understand how he feels about it's performance.

John
Jehan de Pelham, esquire and servant of Sir Vitus
www.mron.org

I'm unsure if the garment is receiving active use. I have heard that it is (first I've heard). I, too, would like to get an indication of it's performance. I believe this will need to be tracked down.

Check this spot for performance updates.

oops - went back over the specs - actually, I used Black silk Elegance for quilting, buttonholes and eyelets. I used the 100/3 Au ver a Soie for sewing the red wool.

Fantastic, thanks for sharing the pictures. I know nothing about arms & armour of the 15th century so I can't contribute anything besides general praise, but it looks wonderful.

~Wil

I really don't know about 15th c arms and armour either. I was given a pic and requests. I'll try to post a pic of the inspiration. For reference, King Syphas (fol. 2825v) Instituto al Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe della Villa Farnesina, Rome.

Here's that inspirational pic. Thanks Tasha for helping with this!!!

Muriel, this article which you produced appears to be a faithful replication of the elements shown in the original illustration, and a logical extrapolation of elements not seen but shown on other garments.

Regarding padding, I cannot see how the illustration can be interpreted as a representation of a garment having padded upper arms, if the artist meant to say that King Sifay had any sort of manly bulk in his biceps. I believe that the client's request to avoid such was spot on.

Am I correct that the original illustration was dated to about 1450?

John
Jehan de Pelham, esquire and servant of Sir Vitus
www.mron.org

Yes, the illustration is dated to 1450. I also concur with the lack of padding in the upper arms. It absolutely makes sense. The fact that there is already additional wool in the upper arm (to give the extra fullness) should be enough 'padding' to protect the upper arm.

As mentioned before, I learned a ton doing this project. Totally sponged in a lot from (extremely knowledgable) customer.

Kinda what I want my lovely wife to "whip up" for me.. but mine will probably look more German.

There at least two German effigies I've seen from bildindex.de (courtesy of Ivo) dated to the late 14th century wearing very similar coats- with the body quilted in a diamond pattern and the peplum horizontally. So I reckon you can justify wearing one. I'll see if I can get pictures up tonight.

Oh, yeah... and that's bloody lovely work. I want to do one now.

In re: the upper arms- it's been my experience that pointing arm harness to baggy arms is problematic, since the rerebrace will sort of sag away from the arm and drag downward more than is desireable. It also helps to have some stiffening or quilting at the point of tension, where your sleeves have none. I would argue on that basis that the arms in the drawing are not meant to be as full as you have made them, nor as thin. However, you have set your eyelets higher up the arm, near the shoulder seam, than the king's are, so the suspension properties on yours should be all right. I'm interested to find out how they behave in the field.

So here's this cat... Theodor von Witzleben, d. 1376:

And here's this other cat... Johann von Brandscheit, d. early 15th c.

Klaus the Red wrote:In re: the upper arms- it's been my experience that pointing arm harness to baggy arms is problematic, since the rerebrace will sort of sag away from the arm and drag downward more than is desireable. It also helps to have some stiffening or quilting at the point of tension, where your sleeves have none. I would argue on that basis that the arms in the drawing are not meant to be as full as you have made them, nor as thin. However, you have set your eyelets higher up the arm, near the shoulder seam, than the king's are, so the suspension properties on yours should be all right. I'm interested to find out how they behave in the field.

Hi Klaus,

Yes - the eyelets were placed higher up - but that's where the armour was sitting. The suspension was fine. Because there are 4 eyelets for each point, the weight and tension are spread over a wider area. Also - what you can't really tell in the picture - the wool was really ballsy stuff. Much heavier than I would have liked - damn stuff made my fingers bleed. I would like to try this again in a finer wool twill (not FINE, but finer).

I'm currently trying to track down the doublet and find out how it is wearing.

Tasha and I discussed how the King Sifax illustration had a very 14th c 'feel' to it. The other inspiration pics were different on where the elbow placement appeared in relationship to the sleeve (meaning the pouf was only above the elbow - whereas King Sifax has the pouf below the elbow). I'd like to try the pouf higher up.

Love your pics.

Greta

Wow. That looks great. I mean really great....

How much do you charge in general for making an arming doublet? Lets's say something in a 16th century style arming doublet. No padding, just heavy.

Christopher

Does your client plan on wearing a mid/late 15th-century harness with this? My experience is admittedly based only on 14th century style arms with fairly short rerebraces, where the top of the rerebrace and thus the point eyelets end up only about halfway up the tricep between elbow and shoulder. I believe Milanese arms of 1450 or so have longer rerebraces and would be anchored closer to the shoulder as you have done, so the tension would be different.

Anyhoo, I really like the four-eyelet arrangement to distribute the tension. I believe I'll borrow the idea for the last few eyelets I have to add to my own new coat.

Mann's first article on the Sanctuary of Madonna delle Grazie armors (Archeologia 80, 1930) has four pictures which appear to be from the same drawing series as your King Sifax- it's a group of 11 historical and mythical kings in Italian harness, and it's captioned "By a Paduan artist of the second quarter of the XVth century in the Camera delle Stampe at Rome." None of them has the same kind of coat, though, more's the pity.

Hi Klaus,

Yup - the doublet was designed for 1450 harness. And if I remember correctly (almost a year ago), the arm harness was rather self-supporting (oh Tasha - please correct me if I'm wrong). It really seemed that the points were more for holding it in the right position, rather than supporting much weight.

I would LOVE to see those other illustrations (I'll send you my private contact info?? pretty please??). It might give some insight on why King Sifax looks like he's wearing late 14th c doublet. The whole historical figure wearing traditional blah, blah, blah.

I really liked the four eyelet idea, too. It was cool to see it in the illustration. I would like to try it on the 'skirt' to see how it holds legs. Of course, that could be over-engineering, but I think the redistribution of weight for legs is interesting. Hmmmmmm . . . .

I am VERY ignorant of armour. I'm hoping to learn more as time goes on.

Muriel -

It looks amazing, as I knew it would.

One question, as I'm pretty unfamiliar with arming garments. What's the horizontal black line across the hips for? Is that for hanging leg armour from the inside? Or from the outside?

ETA - I looked again, and it seems that there are points on the inside? Two eyelets for each, or four?

Yes, definitely learn your armor. The more I do this, the more I discover that neither armoring nor tailoring nor fighting in period style should stand alone as a single discipline, but that they are all just different aspects of the same thing and you can't fully understand one without knowing something about the other two...

Send me an e-mail at redbarbarian (at) comcast.net- I'm leaving for work shortly so I'll bring the Mann article and try to scan the pics for you.

K

Charlotte J wrote:One question, as I'm pretty unfamiliar with arming garments. What's the horizontal black line across the hips for? Is that for hanging leg armour from the inside? Or from the outside?

ETA - I looked again, and it seems that there are points on the inside? Two eyelets for each, or four?

Hi Charlotte,
Thanks!

Uhm, the horizontal black line - not sure if I know exactly what you mean? There is a 'horizontal' line of 6 eyelets on each side of the front 'skirt'. These are at hip level. Those eyelets are for points. 3 points on each side. Each point using 2 eyelets - you can see it on the King Sifax pic. The points are on the inside of the 'skirt'.

Does that help?

xo
Greta

RenJunkie wrote:Wow. That looks great. I mean really great....

How much do you charge in general for making an arming doublet? Lets's say something in a 16th century style arming doublet. No padding, just heavy.

Christopher

responded privately.

I would LOVE to see those other illustrations (I'll send you my private contact info?? pretty please??). It might give some insight on why King Sifax looks like he's wearing late 14th c doublet. The whole historical figure wearing traditional blah, blah, blah.

Toby Capwell wrote an article published in Waffen-und Kostumkunde published in '03? '02? on garments in these illustrations. (Or maybe it was just one? I read the article several years ago, and the only thing that sticks in my mind is the arrangement of the eyelet holes for the points.) There's also a plate from that ms. in Boccia, Le Armature di S. Maria delle Grazie de Curtatone de Mantova... fig. 37.

That's a handsome garment.

Clare

Muriel wrote: Hi Charlotte,
Thanks!

Uhm, the horizontal black line - not sure if I know exactly what you mean? There is a 'horizontal' line of 6 eyelets on each side of the front 'skirt'. These are at hip level. Those eyelets are for points. 3 points on each side. Each point using 2 eyelets - you can see it on the King Sifax pic. The points are on the inside of the 'skirt'.

Does that help?

xo
Greta

Oh, OK, I see it now. I didn't realize those were just the eyelets. It looks (from another perspective) like a black dashed line to me. Silly Charlotte.