Leather armour in art? (brown with metal strips & rivets)

[Kristoffer]

Looks a lot like splinted leather arms to me.

https://flic.kr/p/3txz4w

[Konstantin the Red]

Arms to match (less the splinting) next pic in the collection ( > arrow) -- cuirbouilli greaves laced shut. Other views follow. Frederik van Drakenborch. 1360-1380AD.

The shapes of the armharness are consistent with historical 14th-c. leather limb protection, likely in cuirbouilli. Particularly that radiused corner between large lateral-side coverage and a medial-side coverage that is almost strap-like. Speculation: may lead to these straplike parts meeting in the middle and sewn closed. Pointing may be possible for this closure, but so is permanently sewing together and putting the whole on like a shirtsleeve -- at least down to the elbow-cop.

I wonder if the ridges have to be of steel fastened in some mysterious manner to underlying cuirbouilli, or if the cuirbouilli itself was tooled out to make ridges, perhaps filled in behind like embossed leather? Even SCA batons might offer some insight as to whether embossing stiffening ridges of that kind into water hardened leather will work better than just a plain surface to the cuirbouilli.

[Tibbie Croser]

Tom B, that Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was used in last night's episode of Wolf Hall.

[Tom B.]

Tom B, that Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was used in last night's episode of Wolf Hall.

I have it on my DVR.
I just finished the first episode over the weekend.

[RandallMoffett]

Tom,

'I know I have seen this photo before and seem to remember Randall having some info?'

Sorry I have just gotten a 3rd job so not on here as much as I used to be.

So this is from the Castle Museum. The picture was taken by a My armoury friend who came to visit me while I was working there. The are from the late 16th or right around 1600. There is a full set of leather limb armour made more or less just like the metal versions would be. They even have a black coating very much like the metal armour often had of this period. The info on them very much sounds pretty solid and having worked a great deal with this armour so I have little reason to doubt them original. They came with a pretty standard heavy cavalry cuirass and gorget. The lags are on display still last I heard.

The edging had rather thick wire which I assume was a reinforcement. Pretty thick leather for the most part as well. Must have been pretty stiff stuff.

RPM

[Mac]

This is the stuff Randal is talking about.



I would like to believe in these, but I am troubled by their lack of internal leathers. If it's stiff enough to be armor, and big enough to be a pauldron, then it has to articulate or it can't be worn. If it can't be worn, it's not armor. Better pictures might reveal where these have been removed, and the structure stabilized for display. We need to to see more before we can tell if these were ever armor. If we just accept them and move along, before you know it they will become an entrenched "fact" the "truth" of which will outlive us all.

Randal,

How can we get better pics of the insides of these objects?

Mac

[RandallMoffett]

I doubt you can really... Bob Woosnam-Savage of the RA in Leeds was there before I was and he might be able to get in but I do not know. They no longer have a curator for the war gallery anymore at the castle museum and I do not know who is left but I doubt much has happened since the big remodel we did back in 2005-6 aside from them dropping the curatorial staff for the gallery specific to being general curators over the entire facility.

I had some other photos but have not located them since my old external died.

Are you talking about external leathers on the lower arm to shoulder connection? They seemed to have rivets connecting them at the sides and a metal turning joint as other later 16th century arms did. I looked at them in pretty good detail. I had to be really gentle with them but I see no technical reason they would not function. The pauldrons are attached by rivets on the side. They were able to move in what I assume was more or less the same as metal ones.

The only odd thing was the lack of a central strap as some have along the pauldron but I can see it function without this. Perhaps not perfect but functional. Some metal ones are made like this so seems to be done.

I might be able to answer some of your questions but to be honest they have 500 plus helmets alone. I was pretty busy keeping up with their collection to spend all my time on one object but I did some work on them.

RPM

[RandallMoffett]

Mac,

More or less construction was like this but in leather.

http://www.allenantiques.com/A-132.html

[Mac]

Randal,

I am most worried about the five lames between the main plate and the turner. To function like metallic pouldrons do, those really have to be mounted with at least two leathers. The usual thing is to have a leather in front, a leather in the middle, and sliding rivets in back. The alternative is three leathers. I can think of no authentic pouldron where that is not (or has not been) true. The example you link to in Wade's collection does not have those two leathers, but you can see from the empty rivet holes that it used to have them.

Lots of armor components (especially pouldrons and tassets) are now displayed without their internal leathers. Curators, conservators, and collectors have found it easier to just remove those leathers when they get old and broken and rivet the plates back together through their assembly rivet holes. From the outside, everything looks "good", and the object is very stable, but the armor no longer moves like was designed to.

I suppose it would be possible to make leather armor that "looked like a normal pouldron" but did not articulate like one. Instead of the plates collapsing and telescoping, it would sort of flex and buckle. To do that, the leather would have to be left rather softer than we would expect. It would be a lot like some of the rubber armor they use in the movies. It might work well enough that way. It's a sort of paradigm shift from thinking of hard leather being substituted for metal.

Mac

[Chris Gilman]

These look just like early theatrical armour we have at the shop. My guess is they are stage armour. If you have an actor falling down or doing any "stunts" this is the way you made armour. They could be 16th or 17th stage armour.

[Mac]

I guess the question is "is stage armor better than no armor?". Is armor that works that way good enough? Might there have been a class of soldier who found this to be a good trade off of weight, cost, and protection?

Mac

[Mac]

I have been thinking of hard leather being a substitute for plate, but perhaps soft leather can be a substitute for quilted fabric.

There are a number of depictions that made little sense when interpreted as hard leather that begin to seem viable as soft leather.

This is an obvious one, because we can see it wrinkling.



Perhaps this cuirasse is made in pieces to simplify the shaping and economize on material, but those pieces don't really articulate.


Ditto here, especially the "tassets"


Mac

[RandallMoffett]

Mac,

Not sure. It very likely could have been far more supple when it was in its prime. It was getting rather brittle when I took a look at it.

I see what you mean about the lames for the pauldrons. I was thinking you were looking at another part which is why I linked Wade's pauldrons.

As to unhardened leather. It is an interesting thought. To be fair after 500 years give or take much of the leather gets brittle and hard so hard to tell. I suspect some chemicals are likely left under the right tests that could help understand the processes it went though.

Chris,

That is an interesting thought. The legs and arms both look pretty convincing aside the original iron ones. In fact the one leather leg is set up beside an iron one and most people cannot tell the difference until we really point it out. That said I'd assume they would use lighter leather for this in theater productions as at that thickness it is not really very light for actors. As well it seems to have been made to accompany the cuirass it is paired with though I suppose using original armour would not be too outside theater use but it was a rather heavy cuirass as well.

Some interesting thoughts. I guess it would be nice to see something like this show up in text. 16th 17th is leaving my time frame of focus so I cannot think of any specifics.

RPM

[Russ Mitchell]

Remember as well that fabric armor is worthless once gunpowder becomes common. Powder burns and hot balls go through the stuff like the Mongols through Persia, which they don't through leather. (My personal pet theory for why the leather caftans from my neck of the woods "seem" to become "buff coats" in yours.)

Alongside that, thick splints would still be VERY protective against cuts, and possibly lighter weight. Posit an elegant compromise allowing for much thinner metal beneath the riveted leather?

[Chris Gilman]

Chris,

That is an interesting thought. The legs and arms both look pretty convincing aside the original iron ones. In fact the one leather leg is set up beside an iron one and most people cannot tell the difference until we really point it out. That said I'd assume they would use lighter leather for this in theater productions as at that thickness it is not really very light for actors. As well it seems to have been made to accompany the cuirass it is paired with though I suppose using original armour would not be too outside theater use but it was a rather heavy cuirass as well.

Some interesting thoughts. I guess it would be nice to see something like this show up in text. 16th 17th is leaving my time frame of focus so I cannot think of any specifics.

RPM

I think the thickness is more a necessity of stiffness and durability. Here are a set of pauldrins I have in leather. Based on the construction and condition, I would guess these to be 1930 - 1950. There is a tag with hand written: "King Arthur Deinlle(sp?)" These like others I have seen are thick veg. tanned leather.


I have seen many sets of this type of theatrical armour and they are virtually all this type of leather. My understanding is these were made for comfort and stunts before rubber armour could be fabricated. Much like knitted mail.

[Chris Gilman]

Here is another piece, a silver-green painted leather gauntlet with knitted mail. The metacarpal and cuff are heavy leather, the fingers are thinner leather. There is also a leather glove sewn in.

[Sean M]

Remember as well that fabric armor is worthless once gunpowder becomes common. Powder burns and hot balls go through the stuff like the Mongols through Persia, which they don't through leather. (My personal pet theory for why the leather caftans from my neck of the woods "seem" to become "buff coats" in yours.)

I don't know. Armour stuffed with rags, raw cotton, or waste silk was common in India (example) and Africa in the 19th century (see any account of the Mahdist War). Muskets were pretty common in both environments, although I think the armour was intended to protect against sword cuts. Silk armour meant to stop bullets was not unheard of in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. I never heard of a leather armour which was meant to stop even pistol balls.

[Russ Mitchell]

Sean, it was very common in early colonial America to add a layer or two of parchment inside a buff coat *specifically* against pistol balls and muskets. And when you talk parchment, we're not talking very thick stuff. Now, granted, that doesn't mean that you were proof...as guys who got shot to death during King Philips's War demonstrate. But the guys participating in it thought it was worth doing, which also says something.

[Mac]

The guy on the left has a sort of conical helmet of the construction we are interested in.



Mac

[Gerhard von Liebau]

No strips on this one, but it looks like the infantryman closest to the viewer in the center of this panel could have leather arm pieces on. The white of his shirt is showing at the wrist and there is a very defined line going up the back that may represent a seam or closure in the armor. He has on steel couters over it.

Pedro Berruguete's St. Dominic, from 1495.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... e_1495.jpg

[Ernst]

No strips on this one, but it looks like the infantryman closest to the viewer in the center of this panel could have leather arm pieces on. The white of his shirt is showing at the wrist and there is a very defined line going up the back that may represent a seam or closure in the armor. He has on steel couters over it.

Pedro Berruguete's St. Dominic, from 1495.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... e_1495.jpg

The upper arm is interesting. Do I see a hint of mail along the edge? Perhaps a lined mail sleeve turned inside out?

Auto de fe.jpg (94.93 KiB) Viewed 2333 times

His companion's paunce appears the same, though it looks to be a front-buckled body armor.

Auto de fe-2.jpg (97.26 KiB) Viewed 2333 times

[Mac]

Here's one that just came across my Pinterest feed.



Mac

[Gerhard von Liebau]

"Why, why, why, Delilah?"

Oops, wrong context!

[Gerhard von Liebau]

If we can trust the artist (and if we can't trust Jan Van Eyck, who can we trust) this sheds some light on the issue.

The skirt appears to be scales, and not some sort of brigandine work. So, it must be the case that they are mounted on an internal foundation, and that the free edges have a row of rivets. By extension, the curved lames covering the back are probably mounted on an internal garment as well, and the rivets we see are on the free edges.



It seems to me more likely that we are seeing leather with a border of rivets than that we are seeing something covered with leather or fabric. I say this because it seems unlikely that someone would cover individual scales that way. I don't say impossible, but unlikely...

I've been pondering this one a bit. I wonder if the leather scales are not actually attached to each other from one layer to the next with the rivets, and that their positioning is slightly angled to create a flared effect, as we see on faulds from contemporary metal harnesses? This would have the aesthetic look of scales, but would be effectively solid and also shapely.

-Gerhard

[RandallMoffett]

Chris,

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this but I stopped following it for some reason or perhaps it dropped of the page.

Still not sure. The ones the museum had were still in the right line of deelopment of the armour of the period while the stage armour is pretty different from them. As well they were according to the original seller in the documents they had part of a set that included a steel cuirass. I see what you are saying and we should be cautious as many of the 19th and early 20th century sellers were often a bit dodgy but they look to have far more in common with the armour of the period that any stage armour I have seen of that time and we had a fair number of bits in metal and leather so I have seen a few but nothing this complex. Even the twisting joint at the rerebrace was made like the period ones.

could be but I still think there is plenty of ground for them possible being real.

RPM

[wcallen]

Mac,

More or less construction was like this but in leather.

http://www.allenantiques.com/A-132.html

I know the conversation has wandered on from here, but for posterity....

From memory, the 4 bottom (arm) plates are modern. That would be the only reason I would have skipped over a picture of how they work. And they are (incorrectly) just riveted together. No real pauldron when in use would have been put together that way.

Wade

[RandallMoffett]

I get that in metal it would not but why not in leather?

I was more looking at the design and shaping of the plates. I think the leather straps might be less needed with plates made out of leather. The arms were far to brittle to play with but I have 14 ounce leather that has a great degree of flex still for it's thickness. This was thinner than this so perhaps the joint there was have the required flex simply with hard articulation that in metal would not work but in leather still might. To be honest I did not make a repro of them but in the day I made some 10 ounce pauldrons and the leather had movement in far more places than the articulation and I did not use leather straps on them but simply riveted them to each other.

RPM

[tiredWeasel]

While looking for crossbows I found this image of St. Sebastian (our prime source for underwear on strapping young men and spanning methods of crossbows) presumably by "The master of the playing cards".



The guy in the front (with what I hope is a hat and not his hair) wears something that looks similar to some examples already posted in this thread.

[Gerhard von Liebau]

Here's a buckler made in this style! From "The Crucifixion" by Gerard David, c. 1515. Found it posted over at vikingsword.com.

[Sean M]

Interesting! I also like that the buckler is hollow towards the enemy, not the reverse. That can be a good solution if the other guy is likely to have a long pokey sword.

I am a little more dubious of his way of carrying the buckler (look closely ...)

[Sean M]

In the thread Saint George Statue BNM: Holes on edges of armour?, Tom B found another picture of what looks like splinted greaves over hosen:



It reminds me of the armour with holes in the BNM Munich. I have seen pictures of a breastplate full of rectangular holes from an archaeological site somewhere Germanic (?for a melee with clubs ?).

[tiredWeasel]

Sean, the way of carrying the buckler slipped over the sword grip is pretty common in art.
Or haven't I looked closely enough?

[Sean M]

I have not seen that in other pictures, but my interest trails off after 1410. It does not seem like it would work with an I-shaped grip like earlier bucklers instead of a C-shaped grip, and it seems like if you need the buckler you are likely to fumble something in the draw.

Straps over the mouth of the scabbard I have seen, but then you can grip the buckler and scabbard with your left hand as you draw the sword, then pull the buckler free as a second tempo.

[Sean M]

Some good threads with 13th century solutions are MyArmoury Carrying Bucklers http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19172 (gaukler, Elling Polden, David Teague) and Small Buckler http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=109424#109424 (with Elling Polden).

[Gerhard von Liebau]

Here's a detail posted by Andrea Carloni from the National Museum in Bargello. The painting is from Tournai c. 1480 and depicts the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus's army.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrea_ca ... 034136535/