14th c. is outside of my balliwick. There are a couple of 15th c. groups in the mid-Atlantic region (Men of Warwick, Wolfes company - both centered around Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania). Glen Kyle is working on a lance in Georgia - again, 15th c.

The best 14th c. group in the US has to be La Belle Compagnie (you can get to them from Wolfe Argent or Red Co's links pages), but I'm not sure where they operate out of - they do make it to MTT and MTA, so they must be East Coast.

Skin out? well, braies, & shirt (both linen), single legged hosen, a cotehardi, a hood, belt pouch, utility knife, and dagger of proper 14th c. form. Tunshoes are a must.

For under harness - assuming a late 14th c. timeframe, hose (or padded hose - I've seen them mentioned but have no idea as to how they would be made), a pourpoint to carry your harness. If you are going for a impression of a man at arms, then full legs (including close fitting greaves), a haubergorn of mail, a breastplate either over or under it, a full set of arms, possibly spaulders, and an aventail for your bascinet. A padded overgarment (often covered with rich material and embroidered - i s this a letner?) or a jupon to go over it.

It is tough to portray a 'knight' accurately, and it just does not look right unless you have all the other gear that would be appropriate to the station - of the same quality as the harness. I am not even refering to the equines to complete the impression - as an example, a late 14th c. English man at arms would most likely be engaged on foot in any wartime encounter, so that aspect could be fudged if you keep all else rgarding kit to a man at arms station.

For a well done 14th c. knightly impression, I reccomend to you Gerry Embletons new book "Medieval Military Costume" to see two fellows who havew done it right.

A well done profesional soldiers impression of the non - knightly class is far easier to pull off, and the late 14th c. offers a wide variety of interesting equipment and troop types. You may want to consider that - I do think it would be very cool to have a group doing a really well done 14th c. impression - from what I have seen (and I am well aware of the tournament companies and applaud their efforts), there really is only La Belle doing it correctly. There is a mass of mediocrity out there in the US supposedly recreating the 14th c. - you could shine out like the morning star if you were to pursue it to the level of a living history group - or even a good re-enactment group.

If I can help you in any way, let me know, and I will try.

As for existing 14th Century group accuracy, La Belle is "it". A great group of people, with high standards. Also located in VA/MD.

Not to discourage you, but, portraying a knight in that group is nigh impossible for a couple of reasons:

First, the authenticity bar is set so high, that a knightly portrayal would require massive investments in time and money to meet the standards. And that bar keeps raising.

Second, the goal of the group is to accurately portray a household. That includes having a proper balance of the various social classes. Since this ratio of high-ranks to low ranks is supposed to be low, the group has only one knight. "Visiting" knights are occasionally entertained, or even "captured" but that's not frequent.

Bob Charrette and Elizabeth Johnson are the leaders of the group and the other principals are Brian Brown and Scott Nolan. The whole is centered around Bob and Liz's town, Herndon VA. They do about 3 event a year.

Might I recommend our company, Historic Enterprises, for 14th C clothing? To my knowledge we are the only company that STOCKS 14th C braies, shirts, chausses, hats and hoods. All linen and wool, no synthetics, many made from historically documented patterns. We also make cotehardies and a range of other kit items. We are manufacturing turnshoes which should be available and in stock in about 8 weeks.

Sorry for the commercial.

The Company of Saint Olaf is certainly not in a class with La Belle Companie yet, but we're headed gradually in that direction. We also have a member, Sean Garrison (Vitus) in the Louisville area.

You might have a look around www.bigfoot.com/~st_olaf and see if anything there interests you. If so, a post on the forum might be in order.

I'm having a new "pig faced" bascinet made by an armourer in Australia in the German style, e.g a single hinge for the visor mounted centrally on the front of the helmet. The advantage of this is that the visor can be locked open in the raised position which is an advantage in jousting competitions and displays.

My old helmet is made in the Italian style where the visor pivots from two hinges mounted on either side of the helemt. The disadvantage is that it cannot be locked in a raised position, the advantage is though that two hinges provides greater strength if a lance gets deflected into the visor.

I wonder if anybody knows whether or not if some kind of spring hinge was used on these double hinged helmets to keep them open and if so are there any plans around for them?

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Funny, we're working on a batch of 8 side pivoted bascinets right now.... Your chaps need any?

I'm not aware of ANY historical evidence for a catch, prop, or any sort of lock for holding either style of bascinet visor up, or down. Generally, with side pivots, the hinge pins are removed and the entire visor is taken off the helmet. In the case of the center pivot "klappvisier", the hinge leg is usually 'keyed' or slotted in such a way as to again allow the entire visor to be removed from the front of the helmet.

The only historically correct way I am familiar with to hold up any style of bascinet visor is just to tighten the pivot rivets so the visor will stay up when lifted. If you have a catch on your klappvisier, I'd be interested to know where your armourer found evidence for it. Is it just the tightness of the hinge pin that holds it up?

There isn't any real evidence for a catch or latch, etc. to hold any helmet visor up until the 16th century, and that is mostly on close helmets intended for tournament or those included as part of a garniture for field and list.

Any latches or catches that exist prior to the 16th C are intended to keep a visor down, for obvious reasons.

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Thanks for that. I'll check out my sources when I get home. I have several period illustrations of the side-hinged basinets raised in the open position - the implication being that they were either held open by some sort of spring mechanism or as you say they could tighten the pivot points somehow.

We haven't forgotten "Historic Enterprises" either. Its just that with our lousy currancy at the moment it costs us 3 times as much in our dollar terms to buy items from the USA as it does to get stuff made locally.

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