Mail Demi-Mittens -- myArmoury.com

Craig Peters · Posted: Wed 10 Sep, 2014 5:55 am Post subject: Mail Demi-Mittens

Mart Shearer posted this image in another thread about scabbards. I want to focus on the mail mittens. This image shows demi-mittens, mail gloves that cover the back of the hand, but not the fingers. I have not seen mail mittens like this before. Do we have any idea how common they were from period art? When were they in use? My understanding is that full mail mittens appear around the close of the 12th century to the start of the 13th century, so it seems they must have existed before then, but probably after the 11th century.

Dan Howard · Posted: Wed 10 Sep, 2014 6:13 am Post subject:

Look at the hand holding the shield. It appears to wrap around the front of the thumb and fingers, not just cover the back of the hand - like gloves with the fingers cut off at the first knuckle.

Craig Peters · Posted: Wed 10 Sep, 2014 9:15 pm Post subject:

True. I had missed that. Do you have any idea for time frame and commonality of these mittens Dan?

Dan Howard · Posted: Thu 11 Sep, 2014 2:16 am Post subject:

No idea. Mart would be the best person to ask.

Mart Shearer · Posted: Thu 11 Sep, 2014 6:42 am Post subject:

Effigies & Brasses, Manuscript Miniatures, and Armor in Art seem to be down this morning, so rapid references are not readily at hand...

Len Parker · Posted: Tue 16 Sep, 2014 5:02 pm Post subject:

These look like they tie around the thumb. (at bottom) http://www.tforum.info/forum/index.php?showtopic=14513

Daniel FitzEdward · Posted: Thu 12 Feb, 2015 3:23 am Post subject: Interesting you should mention...

I've been doing some research specifically in this area. The accepted knowledge on the topic is that maille hand protection emerges in the late 12th century, and takes the form, invariably, of 'bag mufflers'.
Upon inspecting manuscripts closely, this really isn't the case.
Having experimented with these designs above, I developed a hauberk with a sleeve that extended to my finger-bases, with the 'palm' side of the sleeve made of leather (I didn't want to damage my sword hilt), with a lace to secure it around the wrist, and a 'side hole' for the thumb- a bit like some modern hoodies. It worked pretty well, albeit obviously leaving the fingers exposed.

The other possible explanation is the system Kingdom of Heaven went with- of a flap of maille laced down to the back of the hand. Whilst I don't really hold to this interpretation, it does offer some practical protection and passes the 'makes sense, speculative but practical'.

The second interesting development doing research in this area was finding a few corroborating sources showing integrated maille -gloves- with distinctly separate fingers. Whilst these have been circling around reenactment for a while, I'd always assumed that they were a LARP'ish fix for the problem- but in reality, individually fingered mufflers do seem to have been about as well.
Search- FitzWalter Seal Die (zoom in and observe the separate fingers).
Death of Absalom- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/452471093784306671/- Morgan bible. Zoom into the hand of the 'shocked' knight- and observe that the artist has taken some pains to show those fingers as separate.
(Some people may claim artistic convention- but given that this isn't Early Romanesque when physical features are shown through layers regardless of what you would actually see, and instead, a more observationally naturalistic style that would in turn evolve towards Early Gothic).