Reference pictures of knights and armour

[Einion]

Originally posted by generulpoleaxe
the field armour was left with the foundry finish (blackenend blue) as it didn\'t need as much oiling to protect it from rust.

For the richer classes it was a sign of your wealth that your armour was bright and polished - hence you could afford to have someone look after it. Past a certain date I think white armour was the bulk of the output from most European production centres.

Period illustrations show the preponderance of polished plate, and receipts and contemporary written accounts support this.

Although of course colouring was used as a decorative effect on many high-class suits, as well as gilding etc. armour black from the forge, or fully treated to provide a rust-resistant finish, like russeting, was more common for munition armours (for the rank and file).

Originally posted by vonkrolok
...how is it possible to change the color of the metal without touching the highlights? I tried in photoshop, simple hue/saturation correction, but unfortunately it makes the highlights colored instead of leaving them white as they should be...any idea?

Hue/saturation doesn\'t affect the tonal range, specular highlights (white hotspots) should most definitely stay white, the rest of the reflections will of course go coloured.

The Colorize option - within Hue/Saturation - can be used to go more fully coloured, but this tends to look a little artificial; worth looking at though, might be just what someone wants for our purposes.

Originally posted by vonkrolok
and definitely waaaaayyyy too heavy to be field armors...mail was considered to be pretty good in the field...maybe scale as well, but definitely plate was too bulky and generally used in tournaments and training.

WHAT? Too heavy and too bulky? The picture from the Wallace collection and the last one, these were suits designed to fight in.

Einion

 

[Queenoftheunifrogs]

Originally posted by vonkrolok
and definitely waaaaayyyy too heavy to be field armors...mail was considered to be pretty good in the field...maybe scale as well, but definitely plate was too bulky and generally used in tournaments and training.

Harness plate was used in the field. it may have been heavy but its damn hard to get through it and its the sort of thing that could save your life on the field.
there are two knights in my re-enactment group who have harness plate, and they manage to fight in it for hours for the re-enactments. it does take a degree of fitness to wear it for long periods of time but knights in those days were fit.
they were trained as squires to be fit.

bearing in mind that in those days there were no such things as antiseptics and it was possible to die easily from any cuts due to blood poisoning, a suit of armour could cost a fortune but the only reason plate armour went out of use was because of the invention of the handcannon....no point in wearing an expensive suit of armour when some peasant can knock you off your horse and put a hole in your expensive suit of armour from half a mile away (assuming the hand cannons didnt blow up and kill the peasant in the process....they did this a lot)

also, mail is not as light as you might imagine either, my fiance wears mail and some bits of plate as was common in the period our re-enactment does and it still weighs 7 and a half stone...(105 lb if i recall correctly) Its good against slashing cuts but its still possible to break someones bones in it.


anyway thanks for the pictures guys, im only technically supposed to post copyright free images or those i have permission from the photographer to post so i might not be able to post yours Vonkrolock unless you took the pictures yourself. ill get to work on posting photos soon not ive finished moving out of my student halls...the last few weeks have been hectic but at least i passed my first year of uni

 

[gary]

The royal armouries in leeds my old work place, it\'s a pitty they don\'t do tours of the stores anymore the collection on show is such a small part of what they have and in my opinion the best stuff is locked away. One thing to remeber is the way re-enactment amour is made and looked after is very different from historical examples so if possible paint from historical armour, it tends not to have that cheap shop bought look to it.

 

[Queenoftheunifrogs]

Originally posted by gary
The royal armouries in leeds my old work place, it\'s a pitty they don\'t do tours of the stores anymore the collection on show is such a small part of what they have and in my opinion the best stuff is locked away. One thing to remeber is the way re-enactment amour is made and looked after is very different from historical examples so if possible paint from historical armour, it tends not to have that cheap shop bought look to it.

i went to the royal armouries years ago and i wish i had been older so i could appreciate it more. i didnt realise they have closed bits of it off now.
also it depends where you get the re-enactment armour from. some of it is by no means cheap, one of my fiance\'s swords cost £475. there is some cheap and nasty stuff out there but it is possible to get stuff that looks very authentic if you are prepared to foot the bill for it

 

[gary]

They haven\'t closed any of the armouries of but the galleries are so small that they have to keep most of the collection in storage where no one gets to see it, which is sad. And cheap for the re-enactment armour was the wrong word, what I meant was when you look at a weapon that has seen real service such as a napoleonic cuirassier\'s chest plate compared to a re-enactors copy you can see a great difference. It\'s down to facts like the effect of black powder on metal the kinds of oil and clothes that would have been used to clean them, the way they where made compared to modern makes and the big fact is a serving cuirassier in the napoleonic wars wouldn\'t have been able to clean his kit as often as a re-enactor.
I think the thing I notice most about armour from working with it is pieces that where made only for show look perfect but pieces that where made for battle no matter how old will have signs of wear, so just remember some battle damage and fading to metals really can make them look authentic.

 

[Queenoftheunifrogs]

Originally posted by gary
no one gets to see it, which is sad. And cheap for the re-enactment armour was the wrong word, what I meant was when you look at a weapon that has seen real service such as a napoleonic cuirassier\'s chest plate compared to a re-enactors copy you can see a great difference. It\'s down to facts like the effect of black powder on metal the kinds of oil and clothes that would have been used to clean them, the way they where made compared to modern makes and the big fact is a serving cuirassier in the napoleonic wars wouldn\'t have been able to clean his kit as often as a re-enactor.
I think the thing I notice most about armour from working with it is pieces that where made only for show look perfect but pieces that where made for battle no matter how old will have signs of wear, so just remember some battle damage and fading to metals really can make them look authentic.

yeah im going to try and get some reference photos of the arming swords and longswords the guys at my re-enactment group use. quite a few of the guys are properly trained in medieval syle swordsmanship and the swords really do get put to some use. some of the blunts they use for the re-enactments have to be filed down regularly as they end up like sawblades lol.
ive got some photos of battle damage on a shield and ill see what i can do about damage on armour

 

[Einion]

Sorry, couldn\'t help myself:

Originally posted by Queenoftheunifrogs
quite a few of the guys are properly trained in medieval syle swordsmanship and the swords really do get put to some use. some of the blunts they use for the re-enactments have to be filed down regularly as they end up like sawblades lol.

:no:

Einion

 

[Gilvan Blight]

Damn I keep forgetting. While up in Toronto two weeks ago I took a bunch of referance pictures at the Royal Ontario Museum. There\'s tone of armour and metalic ones, some shiney and some very well aged. Someone send me an email reminder or something I will get the pics out of the camera and up here. I keep forgetting totally by the time I\'m home (I usually only browse CMON at work).

 

[Queenoftheunifrogs]

Originally posted by Einion
Sorry, couldn\'t help myself:

Originally posted by Queenoftheunifrogs
quite a few of the guys are properly trained in medieval syle swordsmanship and the swords really do get put to some use. some of the blunts they use for the re-enactments have to be filed down regularly as they end up like sawblades lol.

:no:

Einion

they have to be blunts to fight in a public space with them or we cant get the insurance for it, the guys who run the group do have a lot of sharps though. they are used for the history of the sword demonstrations and are the guys who have the harness plate. the first time i saw my fiance he was being used to demonstrate how mail protects against sword slashes from a sharp. i do have photos of the sharps rather then the blunts however (as well as a fantasy style blade but ill have to get this polished up). oh and incedentally there is a weapons check before every fight to make sure that the blunts are filed down if the edges are too bad.

the two guys who run it fight Fiore longsword (i couldnt remember how to spell it before)and pretty much everyone who fights in the group is part of http://www.swordsmanship.co.uk/ and have to have training there before they are allowed on the field with even a blunt sword. it is studied from historical documents, unlike a lot of groups we have seen fighting the most experienced guys fight with real documented moves and are properly duelling rather then just hitting swords off each others swords and shields. its about as close as you are going to get anyway.
after a few months in my group its amazing how many films and other groups you see where thats all they are actually doing. just hitting swords together to make a lot of noise and a show for the crowd.
there was a jousting re-enactment group with us once who were wearing knitted mail and aluminium helms...they couldnt believe most of our guys were wearing the full mild steel stuff.
yes it might not be possible for us to be exactly authentic like it was in those days, but it is at least close and in any case i am offering these photos up for references for none metallic metal and poses rather then anything else.

 

[Queenoftheunifrogs]

Well its finally submitted, i hope it gets accepted. it crashed twice but 3rd time lucky i hope....still not sure if i managed to get it to seperate the pages properly though