I understand that maille shirts usually had no backing, but what about maille mittens? I would think that the mittens would slide off your hands easily if they didn't have some kind of backing. I suppose there could also be some kind of lacing at the wrist - that would prevent the mittens from sliding down too.

I probably shouldn't have searched for "maille", eh.

Your surname is Hrouda - would you happen to have Slovan, or perhaps even Czech ancestors?

Well, what do you mean by "backing" anyway?

That would help the discussion, as I'm not sure to be honest.

I looked through forums and around internet, but pretty much everything I found concerned building mittens suitable for sparring, with very little info about historical construction of mittens. One of things I'm trying to figure out is whether there was mail on the palms. Most today mittens have only leather there, but in period depictions such as Maciejowski bible, palms seem to be covered in mail too.

Hi Walter,

if you are looking for maille mittens for sparring, it's not that important, wether the palms in period were covered in maille or not. Because you will find, that it is most uncomfortable to have them covered in maille.

My advice here is this: make a leather mitten, which fits your hand and thumb neatly. Pad it on the upperside with several layers of thick wool fabric and and an outer layer of canvas. Then add the maille so that it will curve slightly around the sides of your hand, so that the sides of your fingers are protected as well. Make the gloves long enaught, so that they will cover your wirsts and part of your forearms, too. The maille should go there all the way round your arm (like on depictions in the Manesse). Add a leatherstrap at your wrist, for fastening and adjusting.

This is how I would construct such mittens (and I am going to revise my ulfberth maille mittens in this manner, because the are clumsy, not good enaught padded and a bit too wide).

Regards,
Thomas

PS: Show us your work please, when finished