The Armour Archive

I know wool chausses/hose were cut on the bias to give more stretch and cling. When I saw this miniature, I thought, "Hanging the mail on the diagonal would explain the picture." I can't think of any reason why this would be done, especially on laced-back chausses, but Matthew Amt noted to never underestimate the role of fashion. Ideas?

Are we sure that is maille? I am asking, because my first instinct was to think of it as some kind of scale or perhaps a decorative design on greaves (leather perhaps). What is the picture from, and does anything else have the cross-hatching on it which may be more definatively maille?

Edit: After looking at the picture more, I realized the reason I was hesitant about calling it maille is the distinction of putting two different variations of drawing, both for calling it maille. I realize that (according to popular theory) this has been seen before (the Crusader kneeling with the "nickel" plated greaves), but it strikes me as even more odd in this, as I am having trouble visualizing mail to look like that.

mail unlike fabric flexs totaly different with and against the grain, so on the bias wouldn't work that well IMHO

brian

That's right; mail's equivalent of "on the bias for elasticity" is resilient dimension horizontal.

Mail chauses are traditionaly made like leggings.

Those in the picture look like they laced closed at the back of the leg.

The sad part is I can see this as documentation for fishnet stocking.

Personaly I would more likely call it artistic representation.

losthelm wrote:Those in the picture look like they laced closed at the back of the leg.

Most mail chausses which I have seen in sources dated to before c. 1240 are laced across the back of the leg. Villard de Honnecourt's examples are done in such a manner.

I suspect the cross-hatch is simply another method for showing mail, in the ASCI convention:
______
)))))))))
______
(((((((((

equals

XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX

Is it possible that the artist was attempting to show two different gages of maile and couldn't reproduce the body pattern reliably at a tighter scale? Alternatly, do you think the artist just got tired of all the fidly line work of the maile on the body and decided "No one really cares about this detail. Everyone knows what it really looks like. I'll just cross-hatch it to speed things up."

I'm presently working from manuscrips for Rene Anjou's tourney which are better detailed... but there are definetly some instances when you have to ask "WTF was the artist thinking?"

Sean

Sean Powell wrote:Is it possible that the artist was attempting to show two different gages of maile and couldn't reproduce the body pattern reliably at a tighter scale? Alternatly, do you think the artist just got tired of all the fidly line work of the maile on the body and decided "No one really cares about this detail. Everyone knows what it really looks like. I'll just cross-hatch it to speed things up."

I think the first scenario is more likely, that two sizes or styles of mail are used. Possibly this is an artistic convention to help differentiate the two seperate pieces of armor, hauberk and chausses. The "lazy artist" aspect is intriguing. Some years ago Dave Counts had related to me a story of sitting for an art class at the University of Alabama, Birmingham in armor. He had specifically removed his CoP to reveal the underlying hauberk, as he was interested in seeing what shorthand methods the students invented for depicting mail. Much to his chagrin, all of them had simply "shaded it gray."

It is because I believe the pattern of the mail around the face represents an actual construction, that I tend to believe the pattern chosen for the chausses is representative as well.

I had an interesting experience some years ago. I went to my daughter's primary school class dressed in my Viking kit including mailshirt. The teacher got the kids to draw me, and presented me with a booklet of photocopies of the drawings about a week later.

I was fascinated to find that the kids had represented the mail in just about every conventional representative style I'd seen in manuscripts - maybe two exceptions - shading, cross-hatching, separate rings, you name it.

Sean Powell wrote:Is it possible that the artist was attempting to show two different gages of maile and couldn't reproduce the body pattern reliably at a tighter scale? Alternatly, do you think the artist just got tired of all the fidly line work of the maile on the body and decided "No one really cares about this detail. Everyone knows what it really looks like. I'll just cross-hatch it to speed things up."

A third option is that the artist was trying to demonstrate the different texture of a tied legging to that seen in the body.

If you have every seen the early style of mail legging up close it does hang differently than the body would, the tension applied by the cords pulls some rows very tight those in the middle between cords are often contracted (you can see this depicted on the edge.

It would lead (bad ascii art time) to something like this.



and that's quite different to ) ) ) ) ) so deserves a different short cut.

As far as i know the cutting of cloth hose on the bias is a mostly modern thing, twill woven cloth is as stretchy (as is anything that is more loosely spun, modern machine woven cloth being very tightly spun) and more cloth efficient. I have never felt the need to do it.

To associate that form of construction with how mail would have been being constructed assumes that historical hose were bias cut and i'm not aware of consistent evidence of that.

2d
N.

There is alternative shortcuts,
There is laziness/ tiredness

And then there's DEADLINES

I've seen a number of gorgeous period manuscript pages where on close attention we can see that certain things were still in pencil (or whatever it was they used before inking) - and some are missing pieces all together.
Deadlines seem to be quite important to what the final product looks like.