[Gordon Frye]

I'm visiting my In-Laws near Seattle and had to go to the Seattle Art Museum for their exhibit on Spain in the Age of Exploration. Sadly the only other venue for this display is in West Palm Beach, Florida, so not much chance for most folks to see it, but if you're in the North West, I suggest you go now, since it ends here on the 2nd of January!

Not an enormous amount of armour here, but what they have is absolutely phenominal. They have Charles V's armour (by Helmschmied) that he wore at the Battle of Muhlberg in 1548, most of which is shown in the famous Titian equestrian painting of Charles V (I love that painting because he has a wheellock pistol hung from the pommel of the arming saddle), but there was another painting of Charles V on display in which he wears the armour as well. What is interesting is that in the painting the armour is blued, while today it is "in the white" as it were, the bluing having been burnished off at some intervening point in time. Sad, it's beautiful now and would be even more spectacular blued. There is another armour of Charles, as well as one of his son Philip II of Spain. The armour of Philip is the one he wore at the Battle of St. Quinten in 1557, and is equally as nice as his father's harness. The second Charles harness is, of course, gorgeous as well.

The piece that really tickled my fancy though was Philip's Horse Armour. I hadn't had the opportunity for many years to take a close look at the methods of arranging the plates for the horse armour, and it was really nifty to see just how they are bolted and buckled together. It's also interesting in the extreme to see just how thin that plate is. I would make the leap that the horse armour was of tempered spring steel, but that's just a guess... I'll leave it to those who know far more than I to make that call. The roping was great, the etching wonderful, and the entire effect stunning.

Sadly they were very persnickity about photography, so I didn't get any. I'll dig through the photo gallery here to see if the paintings of Charles and Philip are here, and I'll post the link to them later.

Anyway, just wanted to file a report on a display not many are likely to see outside of Madrid any time soon. You guys in Florida, make haste to see it when it gets there, just these three armours, and the horse armour, are worth the price of admission. Then of course there's the book that goes with the exhibit, and the notebooks made to look like a close helmet, and the gauntlet or helmet book marks, and, and, and... The only sad thing was there weren't any swords, but having those famous armours that I'd looked at thousands of times in photographs of paintings, up close and personal, was just a great experience. Unfortunately I did resist the horrid temptation to reach out and touch them...

Now to order a suit of armour for my horse!

Cheers,

Gordon

[Jean Thibodeau]

I see you resisted the temptation to touch the armour: Your fingers must have been twitching a lot though.

Too bad you couldn't slip in late at night with one of your horses and try out that armour to see if it would fit and take it out for a little test "ride" ........LOL. O.K. a little crazy! but if one must fantazise might as well fantazise BIG TIME.

Period accurate horse armour, I would guess that would be very expensive.

Sort of makes sense that you would have to make it as light as possible to not overburden the horse, so I guess very thin armour would have to be heat treated to be worth the trouble of using and being sufficiently protective: Kings or Princes would be able to afford the best.

I wonder why museums make a big deal about taking photos of this stuff? (Unless they are planning to publish a book themselves why not allow picture taking? At least flashless if they are worried about the light damaging delicate pigments of old paintings.) Maybe it is not the picture taking that is the problem but over-eager picture takers climming over stuff and making a nuisance of themselves.

[Gordon Frye]

Jean;

Yeah, I guess they primarily don't want people taking pictures of the artwork in order to preserve it, but sadly they not only wouldn't allow any photography of the armour, but the photos in the book just don't do the armour justice either. There were some really cool things I would have LOVED to get a good shot of too, just to post here if nothing else, but no, can't do that! Urg.

One sad thing too was the the equine dummy they used was totally the wrong configuration for the horse armour... way to skinny! That horse armour was definitely made for a sturdy Destrier, and it just hung on that poor manequin (or would that be a "horsequin?) In any case, it was pretty obvious that they had originally had some sort of lining within the horse armour, but it was long gone. At least I could peek underneath, though I sort of felt like I was peeking under a Scotsman's kilt when I did it, LOL!

I did notice that the portrait of Philip in his armour was only of the light part of the garnature, with only the breast, back, gorget and tassets, leaving his arms to be covered by a full maille shirt which dropped to below the trunk of his body. I found the ties used at his wrists and biceps to be most interesting... supports my ideas about how to properly wear maille in fact, using such ties to keep the maille in place, as it were. But it is also interesting that the equestrial portrait of his father Charles V also shows him in the light version of his garniture, and also wearing maille sleeves similarly tied (though he uses light pauldrons and couters for his upper arms as well as the maille). The point here being that maille was obviously quite popularly used well into the 16th Century even by princes, something we are genearally not impressed with. There are of course other references to maille shirts well into the 17th Century, but this was nifty due to the stature of the wearers.

Anyway, nifty stuff.

Gordon

[Jean Thibodeau]

Gordon;

You are giving me ideas about the practical ways to wear mail: I think I will go buy some leather laces and thread them at wrist & just above the elbow level so that I can tie down the sleeves in such a way to maintain the upper sleeve loose so that when I raise my arms above my head I don't get the pulling or bunching up that put undue stress on the links below the arm (armpit) and restricts the ease of arm movement.

I was thinking of using lower arm splinted armour or the Mercenary's Taylor 14th century arms to accomplish the same thing: Keeping the mail sleeves from shifting position.

I think I will probably still buy that armour anyway, but if the lacing technique works, the arm armour will probably benefit from the extra stability/good fit of the maille sleeves.

Anyway have to recover first from my orgy of Sword/Poleaxe/and Armour puchases: Also known as my X-Mas gifts to myself.

[Heath Robinette]

Thanks for the heads up Gordon. I live right here in Seattle and I must be slipping because I did not even know about it.
Ill rush right over .

[Gordon Frye]

Heath;

You're very welcome. Just try to get there early, since the lines were pretty long by mid-afternoon. It's a pretty popular exhibit, although for some reason not everyone was gawking at the armour! But plenty were, enough to make it necessary to spend some time in front of the armours... Oh what a problem!

One other thing on display in the exhibit was an adarga from the mid-16th Century. What is really cool is that the darned things were practically unchanged from the North African version in the age of the original Conquest of Spain by the Moors to the last issues of it by the Spanish Government to frontier troops in North America in 1820. Quite a long-lived piece of armour!

Oh, there were also some really nifty navigational instruments there on display too, worth checking out just because they're nifty tools for precise navigation.

Gordon

[Allan Senefelder]

Gordon, were you able to get a feel for how thick the adaraga was? I've been intruiged by them for a while and would like to try one in the future.

[Gordon Frye]

Alan;

Unfortunately due to the way it was displayed it was hard to get a good idea of the thickness of the adarga, but others I have seen are pretty darned thick. At least a third of an inch of rawhide, maybe as much as half an inch or more. This one was quite a bit bigger than the later one's I'm used to seeing too, being a good three and a half feet long and two and a half feet wide, perhaps bigger on all dimentions. It was also unpainted, which I found unusual. All of the Spanish Colonial adarga's are painted with the arms of Castile and Leon in my experience, so a blank one was unusual.

Right above this adarga was the painting of Philip's sons, the future Philip III and Prince Diego. In it Philip is holding an adarga, showing the back side of the piece, which is kind of interesting. Here is the painting, listed in the Gallery of this site: http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/2852.html

I hope this is of some help, adargas are one of those cool pieces of equipment that just seems to have lasted forever. An adarga, a lance and a maille shirt will do you for a good 800 + years of Iberian history.

Gordon

[Allan Senefelder]

Thanks for the info Gordon. Iberian medieval an rennaisance military history operates somewhat inside a bubble due to it being a pennisula. The focus seems to be more at times on Spanish roll in European and colonial military affairs while thier domestic conflicts were at least as interesting .

[Gordon Frye]

Allan;

You're very welcome! Glad to be of some small service. Indeed Iberian Arms and Armour are a poorly understood (from our Anglo-Centric angle, at least!) part of the over all picture of the historical evolution of such things. Like the fact that Mexico was producing large amounts of maille in the middle of the 17th Century! Some copper I understand, but mostly iron, and some of very high quality. It seems as though the maille was found to be quite effective and serviceable in warfare against most of the Northern Indians.

Anyway, thanks for the reply,

Gordon

[Jean Thibodeau]

Gordon;

I wonder if it might be possible with some proof of your re-enactment credentials and your more than average knowledge of the period to approach the management of the Museum and "Charm" them into letting you take pictures of the armour "Off hours" maybe? I wonder if someone like Peter Johnson or Craig Johnson might have contacts at some other Museums that might be able to give you some letter of introduction. (I would guess that someone on the "myArmoury" forum might have the nescessary contacts? Ask Nathan maybe?)

Might be to late for this time but pre-arraging this sort of thing in advance might allow the taking of usefull pictures that might be of use to the industrie makers like Allan Senefelder. It might be usefull for Nathan to arrange this sort of access for a few well distributed member in different parts of the country U.S.A.( Or other Countries). Would be a way to access information that is sort of neglected by the various ivory towers working in isolation from each other at various Museums or private collections.

[Heath Robinette]

Got the chance to go down and check it all out today.WOW what exquisite work. Craftsman of this period where amazing in there adornment and attention to detail,interesting that Philip II chose to break traditon and use a German maker.

[Gordon Frye]

Heath, glad you managed to make it down there, it's a great exhibit. It is strange that Philip decided to go with a different armourer family than his father and great grandfather had used, but I guess he had slightly different tastes or something. Or maybe they were too busy with his father's armours when he was younger and he found someone else, who knows! But it sure is nice stuff at any rate.

Jean, funny you should mention that. I actually have the academic credentials to do that sort of thing, I just never think of it for some reason. Sadly since the exhibit ends Sunday I won't have a chance to take your advice though, oh well! Next time a great exhibit like that comes through I'll have to write ahead and get the guided tour, though. Usually such administrators are pretty open to that sort of thing anyway, in fact a friend with no real credentials other than a strong interest was given the private tour at the Wallace Collection and got to check out some nifty things in the back rooms. It's always fun to check that stuff out, that's for sure! I need to just remember that it isn't that hard to arrange, and do it more often!

Thanks for the nudge though, we need more cool pictures of this stuff to post!

Gordon