[D. Swift]

Only two known medieval helmets survive on the Irish archaeological record. For the sixteenth century the total count of surviving helmets in the national collection is also but two - the only difference being that disappointingly there is no provenance for these latter. One of these renaissance era helmets is a flat brimmed cabasset with an unadorned browned finish - typical produce of north Italian workshops of that period which saw widespread use by contemporary European infantry. The other is a fine etched morion helmet described here:

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