The Armour Archive

I'm looking to make arms based on this effigy and similar ones. Due to Gothic Eye being down, this is the only one I could find (thanks for the link, Jobbee).

On this particular effigy, the vambraces seem to be kinda inverted from the position i would expect. What's the general concensus on this? Is it showing that that is how he really wore them, or is it more like they followed the turn of the forearms?

Question 2; The rondels at the shoulders seem mounted awfully high. In making arms based off of this, would they be functional at that height, or would they need to be mounted lower, more in a bessagew type location? Also, would they be hard mounted, or strap-mounted like bessagews?

What do you all make of the wide bands on the arms? Is that a hinged metal band, or a wide leather strap holding it on?

Just being curious, is this an actual photo of his actual brass? I mean are the colors and everything correct?

http://www.britishbrassrubbings.com/

If it is, does anyone have a large color pic of it? I can order a rubbing, but I can't get it with the color details. I assume the maille being grey and the plates in brass is just to set it off, as oppsed to his plates were really in brass, yes?

Thanks, guys.

Christopher

C'mon, doesn't anyone have anything that can help? Anyone???


Christopher

I can make a stab at some of your questions, but remember this is not my time period and I'm shooting from the hip.

Vambraces: In my experience with later "splinted" vambraces (splinted as in it only covers half of the arm), you want the lower cannon to kind of follow the back of the hand. With the hands in a praying position I would expect the lower cannon to move similar to how this one is shown. There is probably some artist fiddling on the brass though as I don't think that the lower cannon would have moved as far as is shown. This works well when each part of the vambrace is connected with floating articulation on leathers.

Shoulder Rondels: This is where you are going to have to do a lot of extrapolation. To my eye these are meant to protect the point on the shoulder. Having them farther down like a besagews would not work. I don't think they even had besagews at this time anyway, at least not for another 80 years or so. My best guess would be that they are pointed or riveted to a leather strap that connects to the upper cannon. The upper part of the strap might have been pointed through the mail to the arming coat below to help hold the whole vambrace up.

Upper and lower cannon bands: They could be iron or hardened leather?? Isn't there a similar brass that depicts hinges on these kind of bands? This would make sense as you want the hinge in front so weapons have less of a chance to snag something, and the buckles/straps in back out of the way.

Colors: The belt and the dog (or is it a lion?) are the same color as well. The sword scabbard is the same color as the mail. This tells me that I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the colors. Looks like the artist did like you said just used the contrast to set the sections apart from each other.

Jason pretty much got what I was going to say.

The arms are just simple guttered defences. outer area covered on the upper and lower arm.

My guess is that the shoulder rondel is thepoint of the shoulder defence and its location is meant to be that high. It possibly was slightly dished circle but it would be hard to put in perspective on an effigy. Imagine a shallow bowl or something fit over the point of the shoulder. Besegews come into use in the 14th but only after more substanial shoulders come into being.

I hope it helps and would like to see your final impression of this harness.

RPM