It is difficult to tell from the pictures. His migration era helmets seem decent, but I haven't seen enough or handled his armour to make any judgement one way or the other.

Some details I see missing from his 'german' full harness are turning pins on the greaves and the requisite hole for them on the lowest lame of the cuisse, and a lack of a lance rest. The sallet seems more Italian than German to me from the photographs, lacking the skull bulge characteristic.

It isn't awful, but it isn't museum quality from what I can see.

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Under his helmets page, at the top, there are some 10th-11th century helmets. Perhaps a little late for 'migration era', but I wasn't sure how to otherwise class them.

Let me reiterate, this fellow seems to have some tallent, it's just that his 15th century suits are lacking some important details (but then most reproductions on the field lack them as well).In example, I don't konow how many times I've advised people invesing in a full harness (and of course they want to imitate usually a high-end piece), that invariably full harnesses of that era and quality have provisions for a lance rest, and a good copy will have them as well, but most people can't seem to get over the thinking 'well, I won't be using it, so I don't need it', and so end up with a suit that gives the wrong impression.

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From all I can find the Migration Era is dated 375 ad to 550 ad, or more roughly 400-700 as some wants to put it.

In Scandinavia we usually make a big stylistic difference between viking age, migration era and roman iron-age. We also have a more specific cathegorisation in "vendel age" 550-750 ad, rather similar to viking age but lacking the christian items. To me, the dating of Migration era to 10th century, is like dating late medieval armour to the 19th century

Besides - the helmets and most other stuff seem ok; not the best but good enough! As usually it is hard to tell from photos.

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quote:

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invariably full harnesses of that era and quality have provisions for a lance rest,

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Bob, o.k. playing a bit of devil's advocate, and i caveat that i don't necessarily disagree that more full harnesses in the LH feild should have a lance rest. but did all full harness have a lance rest? i really haven't discovered many without one. and true, when representing a historical plausibility it is better to represent the norm rather than the extreme. however, when i recently discussed the addition of the cutout to the right pauldron of a freind in order to accomadate a lance, i was presented with two pictorial examples of harness without lancerest. they are not very strong evidence supporting the disuse of the lance rest yet they were shown to exhibit no trace of a lance rest. the first is a contemporary illustration of St. Georges with full harness on horse back with lance (broken in dragon?) which is on page 36 Osprey's Armies of Medieval Burgundy. the second is a breast and back of Milanese export? design on page 29 of Osprey's Swiss at War. ok the first is an illustration so it may not be that acurate. the second, how can we be so sure that it came from a full harness or that the holes aren't erased by the glare in the area that they should be. but then i remembered the full suitClaude de Vaudrey, Chamberlain of Burgandy . it doesn't appear to have either a lance rest or the cut out on the pauldron. why? is it because it is described as a footman's armour? then what is the difference twixt the two and how common was it?

please advise.

daniel

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Db

I don't know much about the first two examples you gave, but I do know some about the Claude de Vaudrey foot combat armour. This armour was constructed specifically for tournament foot combat and would not have been used on a battle field. I don't think you could even ride a horse with this armour. Also I think that this suit is much later then the suits Bob is talking about. I have seen this suit described as being made around 1500. In tournament foot combat you would not have used a lance. Spears were used, but not lances, so you would not need the cutout in the pauldron or the lance rest. Hope this helps some.

Jason
Veltin Grimm

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If you are refering to the Ftredrich Herlin St. George, there is a lance rest. My copy is packed away at the moment so I cannot see the illustration you reference. The armour you mention is a munition cuirasse specificaly for foot service - the armor scholars in point of fact differentiate cuirasse by lance rest or no, and quality of the piece.

There were cuirasse specificaly intended for foot service that had no lance rests (mostly fussknechtbrust/ fanta da Pieda breastplates. That said, the trouble is most people do not want these middling grade - munition grade harness when they purchase full armours - they want something on the order of the Avant harness, the Beauchamp effigy harness, or any number of other knightly harnesses of quality. Complete field armours of that quality invariably have lance rests, or a provision for them (either staples, or holes for the bolts for the hinged German style rests). What they end up with is inaccurate harness, rather than the representation of what they intend.

I'm looking at field harness here - not at specialist armours like the de Valerey suit, nor the specific tournament or jousting armours.

I hope this helps.

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I think you are right- in fact, chronists speak a lot of unmounted knights, but they wouldn´t have waived their lance-attack option. But one is easily hocussed by "full suits" in museums or collections, as for example a field harness in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg bears no lance- rest, too.
I examined this one, and even the armourer´s marks on breast and shoulder pieces are the same, but its nevertheless composed: The style of the "Knechtsbrust" is not matching 100%.(You can find it at www.bildindex.de..click orte/nürnberg/sammlungen/..) Unfortunately, uncomposed complete gothic suits are very rare, perhaps not much more than 10 in number.
Greetings

nope, the copy of St.Georges that i'm reffering to is by "Master FVB, an engraver active c. 1480, possibly from Bruges in Flanders." i checked to see if maybe it was mirror image and perhaps the rest was on the left side of the breast, but none was present. the problem i see with using a sole illustration as a definite reference is how can we be certain of it's unfadable accuracy? so i do question that by this one example, feild armour should not have provision for attaching a rest.

as far as the Valerey suit i did not know that it was intended for tournament.

so... if someone shows me a pic of a breast plate sans rest or the mechanics for attaching, i will be safe in classifying it as a cuirasse.

yes, this does help me, thankyou.

daniel

by the by, Peter, thanks for the link.

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Db

I have him log out as "me" when he gets home.

Jenn

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