The Armour Archive

I am working on a Gambeson/Padded armor coat (largely inspired by the Mac Bible). I am making the dagged coat - but I have seen an image of a dagged gambeson depicted with small plates and pauldrons attached. Hmmm... anyone ever seen this? I have googled images for a while, but this is the only example (the Livonian shieldman on the bottom right) He seems to have pauldrons pointed to his gambeson - and the small plates on the front seem to hang from his mail. Anyone have a source for something like this?

Does the publication list sources for the illustration? Some of the errors in that plate were discussed on My Armoury, but I don't think anyone identified the source or artist with certainty.
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=27864

Nah, all I have is the pic. Not sure where it is from. It is by Igor Dzis I think - but where did he get it?

It would be very practical to add pauldrons to the outside of this Gambeson (I may have to add elbows outside- having trouble with the stealth variety) but I'd rather have an example to go by. I don't want to just add pauldrons, and mysterious discs and glue nickles to the dags... haha.

Your care does you credit, Winterborne.

Wish I had something more to add. I'm a big advocate of hardened standalone gambesons.

Thom Richardson and Randall Storey both provide documentation for "aketons of plate" or "aketoners" in mid-14th century England. Richardson believes these are aketons with additional sleeves of riveted plates. I've never seen a medieval miniature of an aketon or gambeson with mammeliere plates as shown in the color book plate. Perhaps it borrowed from some old Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc illustration.

I will have to bow to practicality on some points... it will button up the front (I can't imagine wriggling out of heavily padded soaking wet sweat-tube) and I will have to point on metal elbows guards. It is hard to find a lot of early period gambeson armors besides MacBible. It is not the kind of thing you had carved into your memorial statue - more of a common-man's armor, and samples do not survive. I am making the Mac gambeson as a sleeved under-gambeson and a vest like over-gambeson. I may give it dagged upper sleeves too. This Livonian guy's kit does have inset sleeves and buttons on the front - but is it just made up? or is there some golden example of this on a Lithuanian website somewhere...

Ernst wrote:Thom Richardson and Randall Storey both provide documentation for "aketons of plate" or "aketoners" in mid-14th century England. Richardson believes these are aketons with additional sleeves of riveted plates.

Why not something like an armoured surcoat?

Thom Richardson wrote:...one of the aketoners of plates survived as a doublet, of cloth of gold of Flanders with sleeves of plates riveted with gilt headed rivets.(592) This may, in fact reveal the true nature of the aketoners, as conventional quilted aketons with plate sleeves, like the jacks with plate sleeves of the sixteenth century.(593)

As I understand it, the listing is changed in the inventory from "aketoner of plates" in one year to "doublet of plates" in another, but the fact that armors were kept around for decades plus the additional description gives Richardson confidence that these are the same armor. It's possible that the older aketoner could have been re-worked in some way. The same lists contain many more aketons covered in various cloth (commonly white) or leather, as well as pairs of plate, so it seems clear that the aketoners are neither aketons or pairs of plate, but are unique in some way.

Winterborne wrote:I will have to bow to practicality on some points... it will button up the front (I can't imagine wriggling out of heavily padded soaking wet sweat-tube) and I will have to point on metal elbows guards. It is hard to find a lot of early period gambeson armors besides MacBible. It is not the kind of thing you had carved into your memorial statue - more of a common-man's armor, and samples do not survive. I am making the Mac gambeson as a sleeved under-gambeson and a vest like over-gambeson. I may give it dagged upper sleeves too. This Livonian guy's kit does have inset sleeves and buttons on the front - but is it just made up? or is there some golden example of this on a Lithuanian website somewhere...

http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?tags="aketon"
There are a few 13th century miniatures showing them besides the Maciejowski Bible, but foot soldiers don't get the press of knights in mail. You could always wear plate elbows beneath the sleeves, as lon as their fairly tight fitting and wingless.

I am doing this because I have a very cool pothelm/saltshaker I want to wear, and I always wanted to have a Crusader kit. I am not particular about which one! Baltic Crusade is fine. I am avoiding mail because of a very medieval reason: expense & weight. (I already have a heavy-duty 14th c plate kit already) I want this to be light. I am trying wingless elbow guards under the sleeves - but they slide around on me. Maybe I should point them to the inside.

I am starting to think this is a fanciful illustration & maybe a dead end.

Winterborne wrote: I am trying wingless elbow guards under the sleeves - but they slide around on me. Maybe I should point them to the inside.

One solution I have seen is to have leather pieces sewn onto an elbow pad, spaced to let the cop slide underneath them but tight enough to hold the cop in place, then have a buckle run across the inside of the joint to hold them in place. The elbow pad holds the cops in place and it feels very natural. I have a set of these at home, if you're curious as to how they look. I can take pictures when I'm off later.