"A representation of such a gauntlet from about 1290 is on the brass of Sir Richard Buslingthorpe..."

The Ashmolean updates the dating to circa 1335. Still, it amazed me to find an image of this cuff-less, early gauntlet available on-line.
http://www.churchmousewebsite.co.uk/buslingthorpe.htm

Any thought or comments?

I wonder if it is truely cuffless, or if it would have a vestigial one at the wrist under the mail (close fitting, not flared obviously)

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I still have not received my copy of Thordemans Wisby book yet (grrr amazon) but I have recently read the article

Nørlund, Poul & Bengt Thordeman (1931), Panzerhandschuhe aus der Schlacht bei Wisby im Jahre 1361: Beitrag zur geschichte des mittelalterlichen rüstungswesens. Acta Archaeologica, volume 2, pp 53-92. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard. ISSN: 0065-101X.

(if my memory serves me right
It says it would be unwise to put the different gauntlets found at wisby in a sort of chronological order, an order of evolution. Rather, it says, one should accept that these decades were a time of experimenting in which different types of gauntlets existed next to each other, 'primitive' and 'more modern'.

But then again, this article was published 8 years prior to the big book. So I don't know, maybe thoughts on the gauntlets changed in that period.
Damn, I want that book.

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The Earliest English Brasses; patronage, style and workshops 1270-1350
edited by John Coales, published by Monumental Brass Society in 1987

I quote from pages 153, 154 and 155:

Lincoln, York and Newcastle Brasses: 1300-1350
As well as the doubtful cases just described, there are several groups and isolated examples which are clearly of provincial origin. In so far as classification is yet possible, it suggests three centres of production in the north-east, and a scatter of small ill-defined workshops in southern and perhaps midland towns. For some of their products, the northern workshops continued to use distinctive non-standard alphabets of brass letters. Two practices which complicate analysis, however, are the occasional use of Main Group letters and a tendency to adopt lareg, florid alphabets based on Flemish models.
Brasses from Lincoln, unlike those from York and Newcastle, continue normally to be set in Purbeck slabs. During c. 1320-1335 they employ a new alphabet ('Lincolnshire Style B', Fig.196), the most distinctive feature of which is the heavy cross-bar on the top of letter 'A'. This alphabet is used at Linwood with a diminutive figure of a knight standing on a bracket, and at Buslingthorpe with a half-figure above a shield (Figs. 129, 183-4).25 It is doubtful whether 'Lincolnshire Style B' letters were in fact made at Lincoln, for the same alphabet occurs on indents in Yorkshire which seem more naturally attributable to a York origin (below, p.158). On the other hand, the use of large single lozengeshaped stops to seperate words seems confined to indents in Lincolnshire. Such stops occur on the Linwood and Buslingthorpe slabs, while their use on slightly later products reveals that around 1335-40 the Lincoln craftsmen started to buy standard letters. The freestone effigy at Buslingthorpe for Sir John de Buslingthorpe (died 1340-4) rests on a marble slab with an inscription in Main Group Size II letters using big single lozenge stops;26 the same combination occurs on a slab at Sleaford bearing the indent of a large shield,27 and on three fragments excavated at St.Pauls-in-the-Bail, Lincoln.28 So it seems that until the late 1330s Lincoln obtained its letters from a source similar to York; that thereafter it patronized the big Main Group supplier; but that it made its own lozenge-shaped stops througout.

So it seems the Ashmolean dating for the Buslingthorpe brass is after all correct.

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I have been slowly exploring the KB's (the Hague) online catalog and found some early gauntlets c.1320-40. You can view the specific images by going here:
http://www.kb.nl/kb/manuscripts/search/index.html

You can either enter the shelf call number 71 A 23 and look for folios 144v. and folio 159v, or go to this function:
http://www.kb.nl/kb/manuscripts/browser/index.html

and look under the Biblical entries for the life of King David.

71 A 23 folio 144v. shows David and Goliath (being a French Bible, it is not surprising that Goliath is German). Goliath wears cuffed gautlets with multiple straps. These print a green hue compared to the mail's blue-gray, so I suspect linen. The buckles on the two wrist staps are clear.

7 A 23 fo.159v shows the hanging Absalom's hands covered in some sort of long plates colored blue-gray like the mail. I wonder if this isn't an attempt to portray something like the Buslingthorpe gauntlets.

Anyone with similar early-thirteenth century images is invited to share.

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