Hello, as my paper is starting to come together (not written yet, still gathering sources) I need some books on the medieval armour industry or biographies on medieval armourers. I already have Knight and the Blast Furnace and I am having a difficult time finding anything else. Does anyone know of any sources in English?

"Iron for the Eagles" by Sim and Ridge is about the Roman iron industry. It is worth reading since there are many misconceptions about what the Romans did with iron and what wasn't accomplished until the medieval period (e.g. wire drawing). Ffoulkes' "The Armourer and his Craft" needs to be treated with caution but it has a lot of primary sources in it. Another very good primary source is Agricola's "De Re Metallica". The best book on medieval armour in general is Blair's "European Armour".

Thanks, rome is outside of the scope of my paper. Ffoulkes is one I just got but haven't started reading yet, what kind of stuff is incorrect about it?

I'm not looking for information on medieval armour per se, but rather about the state of the armour industry (large centers the craft, famous armour smithing families, trade routes, middle men) and biographies about armourers.

Medieval Craftsmen; Armourers by Pfaffenbichler is an absolute must. The Royal Armoury at Greenwich 1515-1649 by Williams and de Reuck might or might not contain material not in 'Blast Furnace'; I don't recall. The article, 'The Armourers of Cologne' by Pierre Terjanian which is in the Journal of the Armour Research Society Vol. 1, 2005 could be very useful, too.

It can be good to track down Alan Williams' other works. Sometimes the broad conclusions he makes in K&tBF are undermined when you look at the details of his research, and there are interesting tidbits he had to leave out of the big book.

Erik D. Schmidt's site has a list of all the major English articles on mail, and PDFs of some of them. http://www.erikds.com/

R.F. Tylecote has written some good things on the medieval iron and steel industries in general.

Also see Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335-1410. Knopf: New York, 1957. It has some information on prices and how one armour dealer ran his business).

The best thing on prices and the industry in 13th/14th century England is Randall Storey, Technology and Military Policy in England, c. 1250-1350 (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Reading, 2003). His website is down, but its archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040622001514/med...rs.co.uk/.

I already have Williams Greenwich armoury on hand, as I am doing 15-16th armour industry, and armour development.

I have just subscribed to the armour research journal but so far they haven't gotten back to me on how and when they are going to ship it.

And thanx for the headsub on The Merchant of Prato, I have just sent away for it.