The Armour Archive

Wouldn't you know it would just HAVE to be the upper cannon that is missing from the Chartres arm. How on earth did all of Northern Europe manage to do such a pristine clean sweep?

Could it just be that the long rerebraces were cut down later as the trend changed? That would explain a lack of existant rerebraces in part at elast as they would just cut them down later as the newer rerebraces became shorter. I guess it is a hard question. The main reason I wish they'd dig one up or find one is to see how it connected to the shoulder as well.

Interesting concept though.

RPM

Exactly Randall, thats what Im driving at...I suspect some of these rerebraces were cut down as the spaulder grew longer from roughly 1410 to 1420. Its a completely logical conclusion...at least the best I can conjure up. Reason tell us is protection is important: if it shortens one way, it will reach to cover the other way. That theory seems to make sense but it turned on its side when we hit later period 15th gothic half braces....so go figure.

However, Italian fashion into the 15th century continued to omit the spaulder and put the short mail sleeve over the rerebrace in many cases (vis. the Getty Fiore ms), so if some of these are Italian arms made for the local as opposed to the export market, they may have stayed in this format all along. It would be interesting to examine the extant rerebraces closely for signs of a cut-down modification, but my gut tells me they were born short and stayed that way all their lives, like me.

Klaus the Red wrote:However, Italian fashion into the 15th century continued to omit the spaulder and put the short mail sleeve over the rerebrace in many cases (vis. the Getty Fiore ms), so if some of these are Italian arms made for the local as opposed to the export market, they may have stayed in this format all along. It would be interesting to examine the extant rerebraces closely for signs of a cut-down modification, but my gut tells me they were born short and stayed that way all their lives, like me.

ya just had to be a party pooper eh klaus !

(seriously I guess the real question is provenance of use....can/could this be proven...I dunno)

Oh, I'm just fond of Occam's Razor, as a rule... eg, the simplest solution is the most likely. Or maybe in this case, it's Occam's Beverly Shear.

Klaus,

The only problem is you likely could not tell if a piece was shortened afterwards. Think about the process used to cut then finish the original piece. It would be the same to modify an existing one so there would be few to no signs of this change left. Now that said on the part that was being cut off perhaps their would be. The RA has a piece from the top of a cuisse that was shortened in the 15th century, the cut edge being clearly unfonished. From the waste side the signs would be easy to tell as no need to finish it. The side being used would probably be finished and would be difficult to see if it had or had not been original. There is no doubt that armour was modified the question would be were the rerebraces done so and I see few reasons to assume not. Trends in armour use in regions would determine the change of course.

RPM

Fair enough. Here's another thought. If there's metallurgical evidence that the arms in question were heat-treated in their initial construction, I think it lessens the likelihood of their having been cut down, since a hardened piece that's already shaped is much more subject to cracking under that sort of major surgery. In such a case, I would think it would have been a lot easier for the after-market armorer to just pop out the rivets and swap in a new and more fashionable rerebrace.

If they're plain ol' iron or soft, untreated steel full of impurities and such ("medieval crap metal," as Alan Williams calls it), then yes, a working-life cut-down done with any degree of skill probably would be hard to detect.

Klaus - I can see that if a piece is heat treated it would make you less likely to hack it up. It's harder on your tools, and it might crack. But I do little trims and adjustments to finished and fired pieces fairly often. It fixes cases where the wearer says "This is pretty good, but it would be better with this little change. Oh, and I have to fight in an hour, can you fix it?"