The Armour Archive

I was looking through Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, and noticed a helm, on p. 52, that I hadn't spotted before (since I tend to jump straight to the 15 C. gothic suits ). This isn't an extant piece, but rather some sort of relief artwork.

This helm appears to be a simple dome-shaped helm (no distictive rivet marks to make me think spangen, so might be something like a raised conical), with no side or back pieces, but with a visor. This visor is what makes me interested.

It is shown with very large breaths and eyes (individual ovals, not an eyeslit), so that if constructed as pictured, it would offer almost as much visibility as a bargrill. However, it's possible that due to the limitations of the media, the artist simply made the breaths much bigger than they should be. What do you think? Does this appear to be a "to scale" image, or not?

Obviously, if this is a correct scale, this grill may make a nice alternative to bargrills - almost as much ventilation and visibility, and not as ugly. The SCA-required side- and back-pieces (which aren't present on the helm) can be hidden under an aventail (which appears to be, although it may be a coif).

Thanks,

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Yehuda ben Moshe
mka Juliean Galak

The label on the picture does say "typical", so go ahead and make one. I've always figured armorers in period worked under the "golden rule".

"Make me something like this".

"No, it can't be done".

"Here's a bag of gold coins".

"You want it when?"

I'm not going to make it - my armoring skills are certainly not there yet. OTOH, it might be a nice project for someone more experienced.

As to typical, that refers (I believe) to the general helmet shape, not the visor itself.


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Yehuda ben Moshe
mka Juliean Galak

I don't remember the page numbers (th book is at home)
I'm thinking you're talking about one of those proto-barrel helmets.
If this is the case, there's like two or three photos of a brass something (a door maybe) with a bunch of folks in camp, then the same folks either attacking people or being attacked, they have analogous helmets.

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Norman J. Finkelshteyn
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