[Chuck Wyatt]

Hello all,
I recently saw this figure on pegasomodels.com. He is listed as a Bavarian Knight from 1350.
His armor is what caught my attention, can anyone tell me how historically accurate the scaled part of his armor is?
I have only seen this type of armor in modern illustrations and models.
Thanks for any help,
Cheers,
Chuck

[William Knight]

Short answer?
Not very.
Long answer, it's possible the sculptor is looking uncritically at pictorial evidence and not thinking 'okay this guy is supposed to be a roman/saracen/whatever' but thinking 'medieval artists always portrayed foreign and ancient soldiers as accurately dressed contemporary european warriors without adding anachronisms to make them look 'old' or 'foreign''.
-Wilhelm

[Chuck Wyatt]

William,

That's what I needed to know. With some research over the last day I am seeing more of what your talking about and armor design that is just not functional.

Thanks again,

Chuck

[Steven H]

Longer answer:
Some parts "yes", others "no". In Medieval Costume, Armour and Weapons Wagner depicts several instances of scale armour . Specifically they are on Bohemian soldiers, late 14th century. They take the form of the aventail attached to a bascinet and a fauld/skirt.

Angus McBride comes to the same conclusion in German Medieval Armies 1300-1500. He depicts a scale fauld based on the effigy of Hans Haberkorn. The scale aventail is based on the depiction of an archer in a "Bohemian bible", presumably the Wenceslaus bible.

However, arms and legs of scale I have not seen documented to this time or place.

Cheers,
Steven

P.S. I am dubious of the design of the spaulders ands poleyns and the upper thigh armour is off. And that axe is silly huge.

[Johan S. Moen]

[William Knight]

I don't think that one should use Angus McBride as a reliable secondary source. Osprey artists are hit and miss and as far as technical accuracy goes he's no Gerry Embleton or Graham Turner (and even their stuff can be infected with 'reenactorisms).' If you want to seriously figure stuff out for yourself though, go with primary sources, but don't naively rely on pictorial evidence stripped of its narrative context.

[Randall Moffett]

Well I have not studied german effigies much but can give some help with an english source of the use of scale limb armour. John of Northwood who died circa 1330 has on his effigy in the minster of sheppey england scale vambraces. So clearly they were used but one would have to look a lot more than I have among german effigies to say if it was done in the HRE. I think you may need to look at art of the HRE in general though for scale limb armour. I remember seeing an example in a David Nicolle book (it was a picture of the original piece so pretty reliable I'd assume). This is the ONLY English example I know of for use of scale so probably not a common thing in England but since it was in use there and scale faulds seem used in the HRE it is possible but would need more research into it.

http://www.gothiceye.com/popup.asp?Ref=KN031

RPM

[Lawrence Parramore]

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=12689