Monday, December 1, 2008

Full Suit of European Armor

Here we see a fully assembled suit of armor int he European style. A full suit consisted of many separate parts as we can see.

The basic components consist mainly of a heavy set of underclothes which acted as padding, a full suit of chain mail, and various pieces of plate armor including a helmet, chest piece, arm and leg pieces and even armor for the hands and feet.



Here we see the helmet with a conical face piece which is hinged at the sides allowing the knight to lift the face plate without taking off the helmet which would've been attached to the rest of the suit. The holes on the side of the cone are obviously for ventilation as this was a major concern both on the tournament field and the battle field. It was not unheard of to have a knight suffocate in the heat of his suit.
Here we see the interlocking rings known as Chain Mail (or Maille). There are many kinds of chain armor and this is what's known as "Riveted Mail" as each link is closed with a rivet. The over all pattern seems to be a basic 1 in 4 technique. Mail was hand made and took a lot of time to produce but was highly prized for it's relative light weight and the freedom of movement it offered.
Here we see what is most likely two pieces of armor both covered by red velvet. What we would normally see would be a steel plate chest piece which attached to a companion back piece, below that would be a piece of steel plate armor covering the hips which was usually made of a few different plates riveted together to allow the knight to sit on his horse.And here is the belt, something that is probably only for decoration, which incidentally was a major part of knighthood. A knight not only had gleaming armor but glistening jewels and brightly colored textiles adorning him when at court.

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