The Armour Archive

Here's fifteen examples of men wearing plaque belts, originating from eight different decades and at least four nationalities during the 15th century. This is not an exhaustive list; rather, it shook out from images I had already collected for a class on 15th century men's fashion. I know of several other examples off the top of my head - for example, the "Black Men" from the Cenotaph of Maximilian feature many.

While they are hardly universal men's wear, and much less common than the ordinary narrow leather belt, I argue that the plaque belt is a perfectly legitimate clothing choice for men of status throughout the entirety of the 15th century.


1404 or 1414 Konrad von Soest
The Crucifixion


c. 1420 Unknown Master, German
The Adoration of the Magi


c. 1420 Jacques Iverny
Hero and Heroine


1420-25 Jan van Eyck,
Last Judgment (figure in the upper right)


1427-30 Jan van Eyck
The Ghent Altarpiece: The Just Judges


1433-35 Jacques Daret
Altarpiece of the Virgin


1436 Jan van Eyck
The Madonna with Canon van der Paele


1445-50 Rogier van der Weyden
Bladelin Triptych (left wing)


1445-50 Rogier van der Weyden
Bladelin Triptych (right wing)


c. 1455 Rogier van der Weyden
St Columba Altarpiece (central panel)


c. 1476 Joos van Wassenhove
Aristotle


1474-79 Hans Memling
St John Altarpiece


c. 1480 Unknown Master, German
Altarpiece of the Seven Joys of Mary


c. 1500 Unknown Master, Flemish
Joseph and Asenath


Thoughts?

Destichado wrote:Thoughts?

http://larsdatter.com/plaque-belts.htm

Pthbtt!
You know, I was so caught up in the hunt that it didn't even occur to me to look.

Oh, fine. Well, here's a few more for the linkspages. I can dig up the wga.hu links to the originals if you like. I'm especially fond of the ones in the Altarpiece of the Virgin and St. Columbia Altarpiece.

Nice!

I have another three from 1468.

Plaque belts were first worn in the Bronze Age and I don't think they ever stopped being worn. They are very cool. More pics please.

No no! All fashions come to an abrupt halt at the end of the century, and a complete fashion restart commences with the start of each new century.

Everybody remembers the great shift at the end of the 20th century when blue jeans disappeared, and the start of the 21st century when all men switched into utilikilts!

With the start of the 22nd century, everybody went naked due to global warming; although they did wear plaque belts to hold the multiple batteries for their Implanted Universal Compcoms (IUCs).

Here is a belt plaque recovered from the grave of a La Tene Celtic chieftain
https://balkancelts.files.wordpress.com ... buckle.jpg

Here is a description of the decoration on a plaque belt in the Odyssey

σμερδαλέος δέ οἱ ἀμφὶ περὶ στήθεσσιν ἀορτὴρ
χρύσεος ἦν τελαμών, ἵνα θέσκελα ἔργα τέτυκτο,
ἄρκτοι τ' ἀγρότεροί τε σύες χαροποί τε λέοντες,
ὑσμῖναί τε μάχαι τε φόνοι τ' ἀνδροκτασίαι τε.

"About his chest was a terrifying belt (aortêr),
a golden strap (telamon), where wondrous things were fashioned:
bears, wild boars, and lions with bright eyes,
fights and battles, murders and manslaughters."

Here is a plate from a Scythian plaque belt
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... chevir.JPG

To anyone who wears them, how much is "heavy" for a plaque belt?

Des,

I think the real belts were almost without exception lighter than modern ones. These things were jeweler's work, and the construction will be based on the techniques used by goldsmiths and silversmiths.

Those huge plaques on English effigies seem like they must be between 1/4" (6mm) and 1/2"(12mm) thick. If they were solid silver, they would be extremely heavy. If, on the other hand, we think like a jeweler and make them out of a stamped up sheet with a soldered on back for strength, the weight is only a fraction of what it might be.

I have an ongoing project to produce hollow pewter belt plaques, but I do not think it will ever come to fruition. My experimental plaques are open in the back, and by the time I get them thick enough (about .070" or 1.8mm) to cast reliably and have adequate strength, they are getting a bit heavy. At the end of the day, I don't thing people will pay what I would have to charge form them. I could post pics, dimensions, and weights if you would like.

On the other hand, if we think in terms of a soldered-up box of silver or gilt copper, we could get sufficient strength from a thing less than half that thick... Let's say .030" (.7mm) for the face, and .020" (.5mm) for the back. If we presume a 1 1/2" (37mm) plaque about 1/2" (12mm) thick, I come up with a weight of about .84 oz avoirdupois (23.5 g.) per plaque. If it takes 26 plaques to go around your bum, that belt will have about 1.3 pounds (600g.) of metal work, plus the weight of the leather. If we use hinges instead of leather, I think we can save a bit of weight overall, but I have not crunched the numbers.

Mac

Mac, what if the plaques were stamped and had excess material around the edges which was then rolled back and perhaps soldered at some points where the material met, for added strength?

Gerhard,

Soldering on a full back would add tremendously to the torsional strength of the plaques without much additional weight. We want torsional strength in the plaques so that they don't get twisted back and forth all the time, which would lead to failure in the corners. It's also a sort of construction that is very much in line with how medieval jewelers constructed things.

Mac

Mac,

You don't think the lower-profile plaques, like the three above from van der Weyden, or on the Judge from van Eyck, would be gilt (and enameled) bronze? There's an awful bunch of identical shapes on those for them to be all repousse, but I won't underestimate medieval dedication to achieving the artistic goal.

Des,

We certainly have an example from London which is not hollow. It's a round frame, cast in copper alloy, with an enameled plate fitted into it. It is not at all unlike the plaques from the Black Prince's belt.

I was thinking more about the very heavy looking plaques like these.



There is certain to be more than one way to make plaques, but the the more massive they appear, the more likely they are to be hollow.

There are a couple of ways to make a bunch of (more or less) identical hollow plaques. Some may have been made by cutting and soldering, but I think most were probably stamped up. You would start with a sort of dapping process to get the volume, and then use a punch and a lead block to get the final shape. Once you had them all shaped the same, you would decorate them with engraving, applied twisted wires, gem settings, enameled plates, etc.

Mac

This book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Der-Pritzwalker ... 3000188991 has opened my eyes considerably to the nature of medieval jewelery. Lots of things that would have thought were castings are really hollow stampings with soldered-on backings.

Mac

Destichado wrote:Mac,

You don't think the lower-profile plaques, like the three above from van der Weyden, or on the Judge from van Eyck, would be gilt (and enameled) bronze? There's an awful bunch of identical shapes on those for them to be all repousse, but I won't underestimate medieval dedication to achieving the artistic goal.

In medieval textual sources these belts are, to my knowledge, all called silver girdles, or gilded silver girdles. The fact that these days people replicate them in pewter or brass/bronze is to save money, but that would have looked to the medieval mind like wearing cheap Chinese ripoffs does today; 'not done'.
There are sources stating they weighed, 3 marc, 4 marcs, 6 marcs, even 12 marcs of silver. As a marc of silver was about 240 grams (too lazy to look it up), the heaviest would have weighed 4 kilos of silver.

Some more reading in the blogpost I wrote when I got mine (it's in Dutch and in English).
http://deventerburgerscap.blogspot.nl/2 ... rdell.html

Thank you, Bertus!

I am glad to see that my guess about metal thickness came out close to the weights you report. My theoretical belt at about 600g is not far from the 738g of the "three mark belt".

I think it is fair to suppose that when folks report belts of "3, 4, 6, or even 12 marks" that weights at the low end of that scale are the most typical. Owning a 12mark belt was probably like owning private jet and a Lamborghini.

Mac

18th C Turkish plaque belt.
http://www.rubylane.com/item/193278-ES6 ... n-Turcoman

I've been playing around with making hollow belt plaques from sheet brass.

https://www.facebook.com/ConallMacLagma ... 9498212707