[W. Schütz]

I was reading about gauntlets and i came across some pairs that had just a single plate forward of the knuckle joint, covering half the fingers. It was suggested that to protect the rest of the fingers individual finger plates were attached to the arming glove. Does anyone know anything more about this/any pictures out there? I have never seen anything like that and im really interested since im thinking of having a pair like this reproduced.

[Allan Senefelder]

The "Avant" armour made in Milan around 1450 from Schloss Churburg (page 110 of A&A of the Medieval Knight) has gauntlets of this sort. The funery effigy of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick shows a Milanese armour of about 1450 with gauntlets of the same type ( reproduced by Peter Wroe for The Tower Armouries).

[W. Schütz]

The Avant from Schloss Churburg has full milanese mittens as far as i can find.
And I seem only to find Beauchamp with bare hands. Altho i did find the effigy of Ralph Fitzherbert who had one pair of extraordinary gauntlets of that type.

[Allan Senefelder]

In liue of seeing it in person see the Arms in Action series the epsisode "Mail And Plate Armour" where a Tower Armouries fight re-creator( I know the fellows name but it escapes me) has the Avant harness on made for him by I believe Chris Dobson(I may be wrong on that). See the book "Arms &Armour In Britan" p.21 for several pics of the Peter Wroe suit. Also in "The World Of The Medieval Knight" by Christopher Gravett ( he's also done a number of Osprey books)
there is an exploded diagram of the Avant gauntlets (p.25) as well as plates of all the other components of the suit exploded for a better view throughout.

[W. Schütz]

Thanks for the info, ill look into it.

[Allan Senefelder]

A trend that seems to have been a bit later (16th century) but of the same family was to replace the plated fingers with maille. The a suit in The Higgins Museum with gauntlets done this way and i've got pics of another suit somewhere in one of my books with the same feature.