Blaz, your the king baby! Those are some great pics ! Excuse me I think I have to go to the bathroom now.

Blaz, yet again, Great Stuff! Thanks for posting that link. Do you know any of the background on those "iron maidens" though? Can't be armour, no articulation, but they look pretty cool. What the heck are they then? Are they actually 16th/17th Century?

Thanks again, and more is always better!

Cheers,

Gordon

Thanks, Blaz!

Gordon

Allan / Gordon,

There are a number of complete harnesses that have been deposited in the armoury over the centuries,some as late as 1814 !,made by various armourers,perhaps most notably that of Karl II of Inner Austria,by Conrad Richter,Augsburg c.1565-70.There are several tilting harnesses there as well,so indeed not everything in the armoury is 'contract' armour.
I believe that the earliest complete harness now in the armoury is one made by Hans Maysetter in about 1510,this is a fluted harness in the Maximillian style.
I hope that this perhaps answers your query ,at least in part.


Regards as ever,

Russ

Hithere,

wasn't online for a few days. I think the CD is really worth its price. You can see a lot of detail there and its a easy-to-handle virtual museum.

There are three photos on the main page. The top photo shows the luxury edition or something. The photo at 5:00 shows a video. The photo at 7:00 is the basic CD ROM, for 72.00 Euro. Click on that image for details.

My brilliant wife surprised me with a copy of the Landeszeughaus CD-ROM. It's fantastic, the next best thing to visiting the museum. There are many features, but the highlight is the virtual museum. You can tour all of each floor, either alone or guided by a narrator, and turn 360 degrees at any given point. You're literally seeing everything in the museum. Separate features cover swords, firearms, armour and staff weapons, with catalogs of photos for each subject, and each photo accompanied by explanatory text with links to definitions of terms. Other features include the ability to view armour in three dimensions, a video of a horseman getting into his armour, historical context and artwork, biographies, military organization, information on food and drink and a host of other aspects of life in the period. Amazing! My only complaint is that the photos can't be enlarged and the sword and polearm images are relatively small. You'll love the dozens of pistol photos, though. The pistols are compact enough that they can be shown larger, so details are visible. You can get pretty close to the objects in the virtual tour–close enough to see larger details. If you want to get inches from a particular object and study it in finest detail, you'll need a plane ticket to Vienna and a train ticket down to Graz

This CD-ROM is not easy to get in the U.S., apparently. My wife had to order it from Amazon.de and have it shipped to our university's English campus. My parents picked it up for her when passing through London. You may find this troublesome to acquire, but it's worth trying, and I say that as a non-German speaker. If you speak/read German and study this period, you MUST have it. Maybe some of the European regulars on this forum would be willing to serve as middlemen....

Whoa! :eek:

Great pics! Keep 'em coming. :D

Have they got any Ottoman Turkish stuff there BTW?

I don't think they have any in Graz. Kunsthistoriches in Vienna would be the better bet for that. In fact, I'm almost sure Vienna has a good bit of Turkish stuff left over from the siege. But in Graz you'll see plenty of evidence of cultural overlap. Hungarian arms and armour, in particular, show some Turkish influence (sabers, helmets).

Armour....Redhead....Armour....Redhead.. which to look at!

Gracious. That just overloaded my poor brain. Please put the redhead in the armour so I can look at both at once.


Still, I do have a serious question for those of you who know about this sort of thing.

In the second picture from the top, we see a VERY large number of Halberds.

I was always under the impression that the crescent moon blade was just for ceremonial purposes. Still, those look (if not sharp) certainly heavy enough to hit with... nonetheless, they don't look sharp.

So are they for practical purposes, or ceremonial ones? And if they are for ceremonial ones, why do they need about a thousand of them? Are they intended to hit with, but with more of a pickaxe rather then axe effect on target?

In this case, I'd say those are fully-functional infantry polearms. The spike looks to be reinforced and I think you're right about the "pick" effect of the blade points. There are some fine arms in the armoury, including some parade polearms, but the vast majority of the collection consists of munitions quality infantry arms.