Ever since I started learning about mail armour and the labour intensive nature of its manufacture, I assumed that it was produced in work teams rather than by skilled individuals alone. However after viewing several 15th century illustrations of mail making, I am beginning to have doubts about this assumption. All these (mostly German) illustrations show a mail shirt being made by a single individual, with no evidence of the presence of a work team. While this seems strange and rather inefficient, I suppose the idea of labour being divided into small specialized tasks is more a reflection of modern Taylorist industrialism rather than the realities of medieval arms manufacture.

Basically what I would like to know is whether there is any evidence of post-Roman mail manufacture being conducted in workshops by large teams. Obviously a mail maker would never conduct all the steps required to produce a mail coat by himself. There is no doubt in my mind that there were seperate wire makers and maybe even ring punchers. But once all the needed supplies were available, was each mail coat manufactured by a single individual (as the illustrations imply), or is it more likely that the making of each part of a mail coat was divided among teams and was then assembled by a skilled artisan?

Mail making in Europe was highly specialised and each stage was done by different workshops with only a handful of workers in each. There were fairly strict guild regulations limiting the number of workers in a single workshop. The smelters would sell iron to wire drawers and plateners. The wire drawers would make wire and sell it to link makers. The plateners would make plate and sell it to other link makers. Two types of links were made - round wire ones and flat ones punched from plate. Other workshops made the rivets. Alll these were sold to mail makers who would weave the links into mail "fabric". The sheets of mail were sold to armourers who tailored it into armour. These armours were sent to other craftsmen for liners and decoration.

Thanks Dan, that definitely makes a lot of sense. If I remember correctly, the system of seperate link makers and mail makers was prevalent in Milan and in the other major cities of northern Italy. Is there any evidence of it being practised elsewhere in Europe?

Here's a quote from the Italian author Galvano Fiamma's (d. 1340) Chronichon Extravagans discussing the armorers of Milan. It's cited in Oakeshott's A Knight and His Armor, p. 26.

"And there are a hundred hauberk makers alone, not to mention the innumerable workmen under them who make rings for mail with marvelous skill..."

Clearly, there is a distinction being made between ring makers and hauberk makers. Wire production is not mentioned.

In 1568 Hans Sachs wrote a poem entitled All the Trades on the Earth (currently published by Dover as The Book of Trades), in which he described many professions. Two on the list are wire-drawers and mail-makers, quite separate from one another.

In illustration, it is probably proper to consider the subjects of depictions showing men making mail as being masters of the craft. Masters would probably work alone on valuable commissions for the most discerning patrons in the business, and were craftsmen of respectable means. The age of the men depicted is the biggest giveaway for who they are supposed to represent - the elder, experienced men of their trade. Journeymen could not expect to become masters until they were into their 30s under normal circumstances, and only those men who had been plying a trade for a long time, with great numbers of journeymen and apprentices working under them over the years, would be worthy of praise.

Artisans were not the most appreciated lot in the world, after all. Cheers!

-Gregory

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The pictures shown above are from the Mendel Hausbuch, which is a collection of "portraits" of retired craftsmen. Each one was painted on the death of the retiree, and shows the man and his tools, not his shop, journeymen and apprentices. http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/index.php?do=page&mo=8

Just read that Thietmar of Merseburg heard that there were 24,000 byrnies in London in 1016.