I was just at the Philly museum last week and looked at a couple of 16th c brigandines. Most notable was something my wife Gwen pointed out, that the collar of one of the brigandines (and perhaps the area around the armhole) was not protected by plates as we would expect, but protected with what appeared to be mail. The weave was slightly visible where the fabric was worn, and the thickness and texture of the garment was noticeably different than the rest of the body.

Where rivets are concerned, these examples had what seemed to be very small flat headed rivets, like box nail heads. The heads were only 1/8" to 3/16" in diameter, it wasn't possible to tell how thick the shanks were.

Of the 9 odd fragments we got to examine closely, every example had clenched over nails in the plate, although several were more peened. It was nowhere as neat a job as you might suspect. The shafts were extremely thin (which would make for little interference with the other plates), and for the most part square in cross section. The clusters of nails were not neatly spaced, and the heads in fact overlapped in many cases (as seen in the example Jenn linked to - which is indeed out of the 1967 Burgunderbuete exhibit catalog - that particular garment has both clusters of three and four nails - the four nails occuring neat the edge of a plate.)

We have a series of digital photographs of the plates and nails of the fragments without any fabric survivals (we weren't allowed to photograph the larger fragments with surviving textiles as the cameras we had would flash automatically and this would degrade the fabric). Craig has them somewhere on his website, and if he would be so kind as to post a link you can see for yourself the details of the nails.

There were probably many variants of brigandine construction, many more than which survive. At least three brigandines I know of (two in the Royal Armouries - one of which I am copying), and one in Vienna do have a series of small plates riveted together at the neckline and armhole as you would expect there to be. There is a brigandine restored in Ravenna from the early 16th century with a front closure that looks very like a 15th c. brigandine, and it lacks plates or mail entirely at the edging and the flex point of the waist.

As to how the nails were manufactured, I haven't a clue, but they have very large heads for the small diameter shafts (16 guage average I think. The large majority of the ones we examined had a stamped imprint on the head that resembles an asterix (*), with the lines of the asterix raised. The fragments cover an 80 year and thousand mile span, and pictures of other surviving brigandins I have seen where you can see the details of the stamped heads resemble these nails exactly, so I would venture that the pattern was one of if not the most common one.

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From seeing the nails (for that is what they are) first hand, and seeing the thiness of the shafts, I can see how they could unintentionaly clinch. As to what the original intent of the maker was, all anybody can do is guess, as second guessing a craftsman dead 500 years as to his "intent" is futile at best.

Regardless of intent, the end result is plainly visible and documentable. As it is more normal for this result on the plates we have handled first hand than normal peening, and the plates from multiple examples over a good spread of time have identical nail shafts being so peened or clenched, the end result was acceptable to the construction of a properly functioning brigandine.

[ 06-01-2001: Message edited by: chef de chambre ]

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Ready?

What about the holes in the plates? Do they look to be actually punched? That is to say, a small disk/ square/ rectangle/ whatevershape, has actually been removed from the plate to create the hole,like a modern paper punch woud do. Or rather, have they been pierced? As if an awl or some tool of that nature were driven through the plate?

Forever Curious,
Jon

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