The Armour Archive

Hi guys and girls.
I'm hoping someone can help me out with documentation for English livery coats from 1465 - 1475. I have looked all over th place with no luck, anything on cut /cloth/style would be good.
Thanks for any time or advice you put into this

Kit
www.knighthospitaller.com

well sleeved or sleeveless? hehe wool with a linen liner. check here. when u see the red/green party colored garmets... thats our livery vests, gowns.

http://www.replications.com/greys/image ... 37&stage=2

usually they are 8 pieces, some people make them in 4.

Thanks wolf ,
Do you have documentation?

Kit I have a bunch of images trapped on a dead computer at home

Start with the illustrations from King Ryne's book on tournaments. You will see a bunch of guys with sleeveless livery coats on over there doublets.

Yes, but René is French, and he's looking for English sources.

That having been said, specifically English clothing sources are few and far between. The English seemed to be pretty far behind the curve art-wise, so there isn't a wealth of sources to look at like there are for Continental styles. It's not that sources aren't out there because there are, they're just a smaller volume of sources and harder to track down. The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries in the V&A is one English source; Clériadus et Méliadice, held by in the British Library and which may have belonged to Edward IV, is another.

Although my personal opinion is that a specifically "English" style existed (just like there were specifically French, German, Italian, etc. styles) it's so subtle as to be nearly indistinguishable from the general Continental style unless you look at the material all the time and are really familiar with details. Unless you're dead set on using an English source, a less flamboyant, less exaggerated more restrained version of Burgundian style should serve you pretty well for English. Details like making the armholes smaller and the skirts of the livery smoother and less full than those in René is what I mean by "less exaggerated".

Just my opinion though.

Gwen

A chat with an art historian I bumped into at the National Gallery in London last fall confirmed one of my suspicions about 15th century English art. Yes, they were behind the curve of the French and the Flemish, but in addition, the art that *did* exist was mostly destroyed during the Reformation. (Yes, I'm protestant, but )

And what wasn’t lost to zealots during the Reformation suffered serious losses during the war, when England was having the ©®@¶bombed out of it. Sometimes photos that appear in books published at the end of the 1800’s thru the teens are all that remain of art, armour, buildings etc. lost during the bombing. The amount of stuff lost is nearly incalculable.

Gwen

thanks again