Late Fourteenth Century Arming Garments III: The Legs

[Mac]

Did you have any other thoughts on how the "lining strips" might have been used?

The important thing is that they didn't put rivets in for decoration until the 17th C. If there's a rivet there (and no reason to think that someone made the hole recently) it did something. Now, that said, there's been a lot of time for rivets and leathers to be replaced. The leather that is in a cuisse (for example) may not look like, or be, the original leather.

I would expect the line of rivets along the upper edge or your example to have originally secured a long strip which used to extend a couple of centimeters above the hem. This strip probably had many holes in it, so the wearer could chose the ones that matched up well with his doublet (or whatever). The leather around those holes will become stretched and broken over the years, and need replacement. In the case of a specimen in a collection, the leather might just be trimmed down to remove the unsightly tatters, or be replaced entirely by a narrow strip and fresh rivets. So.. what's there now may not really be representative of what used to be there.

Likewise, the vertical strips along the inner and outer edges may have once been broad straps to encircle the leg.

Or, perhaps the thing had a lining. I don't think we can rule that out. If it did, then I would expect it to have been sewn to the outer edges of those strips.

If the current strips show no signs of sewing, there are several possibilities....
--they have been replaced (which you can frequently tell by the use of modern rivets and leather)
--they are remnants of straps or suspension strips which have been trimmed down to make the piece tidy for display
--they are remnants of leather linings which have been cut away (for the same reason as above)

The tendency toward bulkiness and grossly oversized knees has long caused me to frown at a lot of reenactment armor. I'm quite surprise to see theses as it seems to contradict my long held belief that the plate should very closely follow the lines and curves of the body.

Many people make the knees too deep (from front to back) in an effort to achieve what they suppose to be proper coverage. This has the dual bad consequences of making the knees bulky and putting the pivots behind their ergonomically ideal positions.

I could go on about this if you would like, but we should take to a different thread; so as not to hijack this one.

Thanks for helping me learn to see. My work, while poor, is immeasurably better than I'd hoped for while getting back into this. This direct result of all you've shared. I cannot thank you enough.

You are very welcome! I try to do what I can to advance the craft.

Mac

[Mac]

Glad I noticed this! I was going to add liners to some reproduction late 15th cent gothic cuisses. I added the lining strips years ago but never got around to making them. I remember asking Mac the same questions. I wanted to make a padded liner at the time. I remember Mac saying if I was going to go with a padded liner to make it very thin. Maybe I'll finally start on this and just go with a single layer. Should be easier to boot! Thanks again Mac!

Oh yea. Thick linings and paddings under plate armor is one of the things I complain about steady

Mac

[RWWT]

Thanks for the thoughts and insights, Mac!

I’m currently doing a lot of playing around on paper and looking at similar pieces to try to get a better understanding of things. Oh, I’d love to get into pivot position discussion, particularly since I’ve been looking hard at cuisses with the deep ball joint and absent and upper lame. As you say, another thread.

I have to admit that some of this is wishful thinking on my part, as I have boney knees and jamming something between them and the armor would make things more comfortable.

Otto, if you get around to putting liners into your legs, I’d be very interest to hear how it turns out in terms of lines and function.

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

The rivet holes (and often, the actual working life rivets) visible at the top of the so-called 'demigreave' lame when one looks at the INSIDE are evidence of a liner, when paired with the holes all round the top of a cuisse. As Mac says, it should be THIN. I suspect a single layer of heavy duty linen or hemp canvas, sufficient to protect one's hose and make a good hit sting a bit less. I also think it very likely they were more like a piece of blanket over the knee, but padded only there, and probably not all that thick.

43ch54cr.jpg

(30.65 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[RWWT]

Thanks James! I saw an earlier mention of the holes in the demigreave but had not yet found the example that you included. Much appreciated!

[Mac]

Here is another example of those rivets in the demigreave underlap. This one was formerly in the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester MA. I don't know if it ended up in the Worcester Art Museum or not.



I think these might be the only two examples I know of. If I've seen others, they have slipped my mind.

Mac

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

The cuisse/poleyns from Churburg c. 1450 in the UK's R.A. has them, too.

[Sean M]

Did you have any other thoughts on how the "lining strips" might have been used?

The important thing is that they didn't put rivets in for decoration until the 17th C. If there's a rivet there (and no reason to think that someone made the hole recently) it did something. Now, that said, there's been a lot of time for rivets and leathers to be replaced. The leather that is in a cuisse (for example) may not look like, or be, the original leather.

I am going to roll that around in my head, but there was a fashion in Tuscany in the 1360s and 1370s for armours with borders of rivets where from 1380 to 1410 they would put borders of brass sheet. The gauntlets from Cucagna IV b and the Pistoia altarpiece are two good examples (the groups of three rivets over the back of the hand are not doing anything!), I think it started in places where there were already rivets for structural reasons and came back in in the late 15th century (Big Ulrich's grand bascinet and the armour for a Spanish customer in Vienna).





Hildebrandt used plain old steel rivets to do the mechanical work on the gauntlets, because replacing the ball-headed brass rivets will be a pain: you can see then in the sketches where the fingers would have joined the main plate. Piotr and I debated whether to put a lining in the cuisse, but I think he had seen too many over-padded cuisses too: I like the idea of one layer of canvas with a little cotton quilted in at the knee.

[Mac]

Sean,

You have got me there!

I should have thought this out more carefully before I made a blanket statement like that.

Now, I would argue the the rivets on Ulrich's helmet may be for a lining strip, but the ones on those gauntlets are clearly decorative. Likewise, the big fancy rivets around the tassets on Ferdinand's armor in Vienna are likely to be there just for pretty.

Mac

[RWWT]

James, did you have the present location or date of the working life for the example knee you posted with the rivets in the demigreave? I’m looking to make sure I kept things in the same period.

[John Vernier]

That cuisse James posted is at Churburg, Trapp T54, Scalini S12, Goll ref_arm_2910

Trapp says it's 2nd half xv century, which is uncharacteristically way off. Scalini says c.1365-70, which is characteristically on the early side - but it has a lot in common with the Chartres cuisse which is believed to have been placed in the cathedral in 1380 or shortly thereafter, so maybe he's not too far off.

The picture JAG posted is from Boccia and Coelho, L'Arte dell'Armatura in Italia
From Goll:

[RWWT]

Thanks John! I must have browsed past it in Goll and I’m otherwise still building my library. Agree entirely on the date discrepancy. These are very similar stylistically to the other examples I’ve been playing with between 1380- 1400ish.

Now that I’ve been turned on to these rivets, I feel like I’m seeing a whole lot more of them in various examples.

[Sean M]

Also a payre hosyn of stamyn sengill: in the Scottish royal wardrobe accounts from 1543 to 1553, the most common material for the lower legs (shanks, shankes, shankis) of hose was stemming or stemmyng. So it seems to be a light stretchy woolen. (Melanie Schuessler Bond, Dressing the Scottish Court, p. 58). The LEXIS project lists it as stamin

John Hill says "corde" and there are thoughts that the word stamin has something to do with border or edge.

In 1522 the hosiers of Seville agreed that hose of stamin (estameña) shall be cut along the thread and wale (a su hilo y cordón derecho: Ruth Matilda Anderson, Hispanic Costume, p. 70). So maybe sometimes this fabric had ridges like corduroy or grossgrain.

[Sean M]

As I track down image rights for my second book, I noticed another painting with the Y straps appearing under the hem and splitting above the knee. Look at the soldiers on the left.



Princes of the West" BNF, MS. Français 12559 Livre du Chevalier Errant by Thomas de Saluces (Paris, 1403-1404) fol. 161v <https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... /f326.item> GALLICA LICENSE <https://manuscriptminiatures.com/4882/14165>

Does anyone have a citation for the sketch by Pisanello above? An image from "an old photocopy" is like a proof of ownership "somewhere." It lets you know to start searching, but its useless on its own.

Edit: JAG first posted his loose photocopy in 2008 and the original is in the Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, inventory number
4876 https://collectiononline.fondationcusto ... 2a3cb86434