I was recently asked to post some photos of people wearing armor.
Naturally, Iām not just going to do that, Iām going to make a big long post about reproduction armor and armor in art.
Iāll be including pictures like this, most of which Iāve posted before. Theyāre by an Italian armorer named Augusto Boer Bront that runs the XIVth and XVth Century European Armor Facebook groups.
The above photo talks about how the aventail of a bascinet should sit on the wearerās face. When it comes to bascinets, this mistake is a frequently made one, and a good pair of reproductions can be seen below, in the forms of the armor worn by Ian LaSpina (left) and ReeseĀ (right, I donāt know his last name,) both of whom have YouTube channels (Iāve linked them, you should check them out if youāre interested.)
This photo is a good example of how an aventail should fit though.
Ian LaSpinaās kit is an early XVth century English kit, sporting the classic heavily enclosed English style with a standard houndskull bascinet and hourglass shaped gauntlets (also lacking a textile covering for the breastplate) marking it as belonging to the 1400ā²s to 1410ā²s.
Another common mistake is the fit of a breastplate. You can see quite clearly on Ianās kit above that the breastplate sits right on his natural waistline, giving way to theĀ āpaunce of platesā or metal skirt that covers the rest of his torso. This setup allows for freedom of movement. If breastplates stopped at the hip, like many reproductions and artistic renditions do, then the wearer wouldnāt be able to bend.
You can also see how the breastplate is domed. A breastplate must be domes like that, to encourage weapons and projectiles to glance. If it were flat, weapons could strike at right angles, imparting the entirety of their force and rendering the armor significantly less effective.
A few more things can be gleaned from this picture of Ian in an older version, less complete of his kit. The shape of his helmet, and the fact that his visor covers the vervelles. Vervelles are the points on the bascinet were the aventail is laced on. On a side-hinging bascinet, the visor should cover them, as pictured above. Bascinet shape is also very important, as expressed in the above diagram.
Moving on from Ian LaSpina, we can take a moment to appreciate the armor of one of the biggest names in the community: Dr. Tobias Capwell.
Itās absolutely stunning, isnāt it? Dr. Capwellās armor is also English, like Ianās, however his is later, about 1440. Itās blackened entirely, with gold trimming, and it is beautiful.
Here is Dr. Capwell wearing a reproduction set of the famous Avant harness, pictured below. This is the absolute epitome of what Milanese style armor in the late XVth century was like. The helmet is not contemporary with the suit, so it was omitted from the reconstruction.
Now, because I was asked to post pictures of people in armor, Iāll throw in this photo from āThe Great Tournament of Schaffhausenā in Switzerland. The man on the left is wearing a classic suit of German Gothic armor, to his right you have Dr. Capwell in what looks like his English 1440 suit, pre-blackening, and the two gentlemen on the right appear to be in Milanese style Italian kits. Itās hard to say what the woman in the back is wearing, but it looks like it could be Gothic or Italian.
Iāve now included so many pictures of people in full plate that I would feel remiss not including at least one photo of someone in something else. So, here is Tom Biliter in a set of German Gothic armor (probably late XVth century,) but rather than a standard cuirass, he is wearing whatās known as a brigandine. A brigandine is a series of small overlapping plates riveted to a textile backing.
Here are a couple of pictures of Ian LaSpina wearing a reproduction of the Churburg S18 armet. This armet is from the armories of Churburg castle in Northern Italy, and dates to about 1410.
One final thing Iād like to touch on in this titan of a post: the applications of these principles in the design of fantasy armors.
Often when you see fantasy armor designs, they are quite ridiculous. They are large, have vast openings, donāt fit right, and so on. Now, the physics of these fantasy world are generally the same as ours, therefore the same principles of armor making should apply.
āBut OP,ā I hear you cry,Ā āI want my armor to look fantastic and cool. How an I do that if I have to abide by dumb physics?ā
Well first off, Iām not saying you have to abide by physics, but if you wantĀ to, you could do something like this.
The Sovereign armor. This armor was 3D printed by Melissa Ng, and designed with help from a name youāll recognize by now: Ian LaSpina.
Itās super cool, very fantasy looking, but still applies all of the basic principles of how armor fits, allowing Melissa to move around properly, so the armor doesnāt restrict her.
So, this has been my armor post. If youāve stuck around this long, good on you. I hope Iāve said something new to you, or at least shown you an armor youāve never seen before. Cheers!
Just throwing in a bit of extra detail about bascinets.
For one thing their camail / aventail was a curtain of mail hanging from the edge of the helmet, as opposed to a mail coif covering the entire head.
A coif was, or should be, always worn with a padded arming-cap underneath (this illustration suggests the artist meant them to seem as well-padded as gambesonsā¦)
ā¦and sometimes also a steel skullcap called a cerveilliere.
Mail resting on an otherwise-unprotected head might turn a glancing cut, but gave no protection against the blunt-force trauma of a solid hit.Ā
All the bascinets in @armthearmourās post have āpig-faceā / āhounskullā visors which opened on a pair of swivels at the bascinetās temples. Another version mentioned briefly had a single hinge on the forehead, called a klappvisier (flap visor).
This is an especially useful photo since it shows not only the visor attachment but also the rivet-holes in the edge for securing a padded lining, and the vervelles for mounting a camail (large rings in its upper hem fitted over those pierced studs, then a thick wire or leather cord was run through the holes.)
The other form of klappvisier was less pointy.
ā¦and this re-enactor shows how it could be carried when not fitted to the bascinet.
There was a mid-13th century fad for attaching things to the breastplate by chains - swords, daggers, even great-helms - so that visor hanging from one isnāt unreasonable This re-enactor shows how it was done (BTW, the helm of this period was big enough to wear over the bascinetā¦.)
ā¦while this re-enactor has the anchor-points but no chains.
What he does have is the alternative face-protection worn with those forehead-mount bascinets. Itās called a bretache, and was a removable nose-guard that worked like so:
The earliest, or maybe less costly, versions seem to have been no more than a triangle of mail pulled up and fixed to the bascinet as here (more chains, BTW).
ā¦but usually theyāre represented as solid metal. Hereās a knight (St George?) wearing oneā¦
ā¦and a re-enactor photo showing how well it covered the wearerās faceā¦
After much searching (most sources are funeral effigies where the bretache is worn down) I finally turned up a period illustration showing bretaches worn raised for combat:
Here are the close-upsā¦
Looks like a hard day at work for somebodyā¦
