| Matthew P. Adams wrote: |
| if you put linseed oil on steel, and heat it, just like seasoning an iron frying pan, the first couple layers are straw, then it goes a mottled gold/brown before darkening to black.
just a thought... |
I would certainly think that smiths figured out thousands of years ago that burning different organic substances onto hot iron caused it to acquire a protective and decorative patina, but I cannot find any surviving examples or descriptions of the process from Europe before the sixteenth century. I have sources for polishing, tinning, covering with cloth or leather, painting iron, and gilding copper in the later middle ages.
Anyone who makes or commissions reproductions has to chose when to go with “they could have done X” and when to go with “the following texts and surviving pieces show that they sometimes did Y.” Personally, I would want evidence that they treated plate that way before I speculated that they did the same for mail which is constantly rubbing on itself.