Hello, Eric,

Never mind, I found that photo. It seems it must be of 'my shirt'; I had two at the same time, but the other was more the standard Ottoman sort. I might post some photos of it, since it has a number of amusing features.

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I'm presuming the lighter looking mail, which appears to be all-riveted, are the sleeves. If so, we have a demi-riveted body which might be Turkish, with all-riveted sleeves, which might have been European. Additionally, there are some notable repairs.


Or perhaps not.
I gather this is an armpit from the 90 degree join at lower left? If the rows are oriented in the usual way, the lighter mail would be an added strip beneath the sleeve, perhaps to make the shirt fit a larger girth, and the underside of the sleeve would lay at the bottom left corner. The only other explanation for the join is that the lighter mail forms the collar, which seems counter-intuitive.

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All the Ottoman photos are in my last post. All the others are of the heavy shirt. I think Mart is right that the lighter, all riveted, links are the sleeves. The links in the sleeves were just lighter versions of those on the main body, and clearly (to me, at least, who had his hands on it) original parts of the shirts. Look carefully at the hole, and you will see one of those really thick not quite round repair links second from the left. When it comes to the collar on the heavy shirt, it seems to me that a collar could have conceivably been a hood once upon a time. Just sayin'.

This is clearly an all riveted collar added to the Turkish shirt. -

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James,
So the "heavy" shirt is of demi-riveted construction in the body with wedge rivets, and the sleeves appear to be of similar workmanship, though they're lighter and all-riveted?

It sounds like a shop where different sections are working on different parts of the shirt using different rings, but it's assembled as a whole within the overall business. This is very similar to what I was observing with Wade's shirt, though his was all riveted.

That sounds pretty plausible, seeing as a shirt wasn't made by one man, anyway. I'm still trying to puzzle out the switch to all riveted on the arms, though. You'd think they only had one set of punches for the solid links! :D

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Mart Shearer wrote:

I think all of the flats have been punched from sheet, with both the center and outer puch being driven from the same side. This causes the solid rings to cup, like a shallow bundt cake pan. The last 6 rows have been woven with the solids turned cup-side up, while the rest of the shirt has been woven cup-side down. It probably is caused by adding a patch of mail woven the opposite way that the primary maker weaves his. When I'm making mail from half-solids, I try to keep them all cupped the same way to give a uniform appearance, and because I'm anal about stuff like that.

Mart, you are way better at figuring out things like this than I am, my eyes get blurry trying to decipher messes like this. Did they just use new riveted links to fill a hole, with the cupped solid links added as filler?

Just for the newbies, I should point out one of my favorite details, the fake riveted rings. I keep running into these things on the stuff that comes out of Africa. The heavy shirt has none.

Here is another demi riveted hauberk which appears to be non European, alternating row of well made solid and wedge riveted links, Height : 94cm, Width : armpit to armpit : 68cm, Width : ends of sleeve to sleeve : 120cm, unfortunately no weight, I would say this matches the other similarly made hauberks that are said to be Ottoman Circassian.

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I should check in more often!

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James, do you mean the fake riveted links that the whiter arrows point to?

The 'white arrow links' are all real. There are not many of the fake riveted links I was talking about in that photo, and mostly their back sides, at that. Look at the others from my post of June 27.

My own humble little mail fragment:

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That's really cool Craig! Tell us more, where did you get it, what time is it from, what do you notice about this kind of construction. I'm envious you are starting an antique collection...

This looks pretty close to modern flattened mail: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pansarskjorte%C3%A4rm,_Alskogs_ka_-_Livrustkammaren_-_19343.tif

This one looks just like modern mail: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ringbrynja_med_halvarmar_-_Livrustkammaren_-_62057.tif It looks like a hammer was used instead of a swaging tool. Down at bottom it has different images of same object. Does the cut of the neckline tell us anything of it's origin?

I got a little more info on the flattened mail. It's labeled Alskogs Ka (Alskogs Kyrka) which is in Gotland. Gotland is where the flattened Tofta mail coif is from.