A small group study of armor details from the late 16th and early 17th c.

In January 2025 I held a a wide ranging study of items that relate to specific projects and interests of a small group of people (4 including me) interested in the construction of armor. Most are working specifically on late 16th c. armor. Others had a more general interest. Attendees brought pieces of armor they were building and antique pieces from their collections, so the list of items included those related to the basic study, and comparison and discussion of the attendees pieces.

Much of the study involved taking apart 4 armors. Each was taken down and fully disassembed. Small portions of two of the armors were put on by attendees allowing them to get a real feel for how the parts fit on the body, how the weight is distributed and how they move. In each case, we discussed how this would be different if the armor actually fit the wearer properly.

Some specific areas of discussion included :

• How does a gorget fit - using several original gorgets, we put them on attendees, discussed how they fit, placed pressure on them and analyzed the points of contact and movement allowed and restrictions. This incuded a direct comparison to two gorgets made by attendees that were closely reflected in style by two of the originals studied.
• While each piece was studied, the discussions included what modifications/associations have been done to the pieces since they were originally made. Sometimes these changes are irrelevant, sometimes they really matter to the function of the piece. One of the most interesting is how pauldrons are often modified from having a leather between the main plate and the next plate up in the front to being secured by a pivoting rivet. Many of the pauldrons also have some associated lower plates, so often we see spare slots in places where they would not have existed originally.
• The shape and fit of gauntlets in the 16th c. and how this shape reflects the anatomy of the hand. We included intentionally well done pieces and some low end pieces to show how "badly" a piece can be made and still work.
• There was a question asked about how bad "restorations" could be, so many odd restorations were pointed out and discussed. I illustrated this with my "gothic" breastplate from the Higgins, we talked about the welding of brigandine plates into a dramatically rusted skull, and various other interesting things.
• We took apart a very nice reproduction cranequin and found that we could access the inside of mine without fully disassembling it.
• We looked at a number of different upper arm "turners" and discussed their design, some things I have done when manufacturing them and entertaining subtle details that differentiate them. It was interesting to find that my two "Pisan half suits" have different turner architectures.
• Since all of the attendees make armor, we wandered down some side tracks to discuss metal movement to achieve desired shapes in different pieces of armor.

  The following display the items in different ways.

  Introduction and small images of each item

  All of the information on one page