Help! what is this armour?

[finnobreanan]

Brendan, Finn, great research. That is what this forum is for!

Finn, what source were you citing for detail on the armour ? I've been talking of getting a harness commissionned for years. Something distinctively irish, and 15thC might be just what I needed to kick off the process.

John

Men at Arms series on The Irish Wars 1485-1603 by Ian Heath (Author), David Sque (Illustrator).

[the_power]

Heh. I actually have that at home, and remember the picture now. I'd forgotten about it, as I've not read it in a while. I'll post it later.

John

[finnobreanan]

Here's the artist's rendering from the book:

[frodo]

Urgh I would advise anyone with the Irish Wars book to tear out those "artists impressions" from the center of the book and throw them away they are so utterly invented and far from reality as World of Warcraft is from actual history.

Looking at finds and other contextual resources from the period I would be included to suggest that it is a poor representation of a coat of plates by the carver of the effigy. The banding and overlapping plates looks very much like the Visby finds http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/wisby_cop/ and here is a site with 25 reconstructed samples of the armours found on the site http://www.hoashantverk.se/hantverk/hoa ... index.html which also includes the flexible spaulders represented on the effigy. At aa guess I would put it on the same timeline as the Churburg armour, taking the style of bascinet shown into context so late 14thc would be the timeline. (linky to picture of the armour just because its so pretty http://www.1300ad.co.nz/images/armour/AB0072.jpg)

As a side note I feel that that osprey book has done more to harm the state of authenticity in kit for this period than help, the overall history and the few sources it actually uses are fine but the artwork and its grand assumptions are so vile I actually wrote a letter to the editor to complain. They are inaccurate and really just an insult to the intelligence of the readers, the prime example being the metal sock on the hand of one of the gallowglass how on earth that is meant to work is beyond me. They look like illustrations from a dungeons and dragons manual from the 80's. Ok rant over sorry about that hope the links help.

[the_power]

I don't buy it. I could understand one carver screwing up and making stuff up. But we've had at least three sculptors, in different parts of the country, show the same externally banded armour. One of which does seem to be a COP/Brigandine type armour (with rivets), I suppose - slightly like . I don't think the sculptors are very wrong. Slightly inaccurate, I could imagine. But I'm sure these guys would be provided with a sketch of what was required, by someone who actually saw the armour in use.

This looks very like the one you linked to; http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... ne_942.jpg

I'm still all confused. Dammit.

John

[femgeek]

Dont know if this is much help, but the banded armour looks very like a style of Bronze Age Greek armour. The banding is much thicker on the Greek and is usually coiled around, a few finds have been discovered of this armour type. This is the only picture I could find online, all other pics that I've seen are in books. http://www-fakkw.uni-paderborn.de/~link/exkursionen/peloponnes/Nauplio1.htm It's possible this is an early version of what is depicted in the medieval images, though I never came across a study into the evolution of that Bronze armour.

[the_power]

Wow. I never realised Greek armour was that advanced. I know they had bronze mail well before the celts, but ... full plate!

john

[frodo]

John I wasnt dismissing the sculptor, I was dismissing the Osprey books as nonsense. I gave examples of almost exactly the same armour here:-http://www.hoashantverk.se/hantverk/hoas_rustningar/index.html
As they are all replicated finds from Visby, as there was no leather backing found with the plates it is all speculative however I think the closeup of the first find is almost exactly what is shown here:-
http://www.hoashantverk.se/hantverk/hoa ... insid.html
Potentially the plates were on the outside we just dont know.
Some of the other examples on the Hoas website also show the smaller plate style example also found on the Visby site considering there were over 20 differnt Coat styles found there external plates are not a wild leap of the imagination.

That Greek armour is awesome, looks very Persian but its just astonishing how far advanced it was for the period.

[finnobreanan]

I had totally forgotten about the armor found from the Battle of Visby (1361) and how similar it is to the armor are some examples of tomb art. I see that they have finally reprinted the book on the archeology there, but it is still an expensive book:
http://www.amazon.ca/Armour-Battle-Wisb ... 1891448056

I would agree that many of the color plates in the book "The Irish Wars" are pure flights of fancy, but not all of them in general.