Other Marks Found on Armour

Most of the marks found on armour are directly related to its manufacture, but there are other sets of marks which are found on some pieces. These include assembly marks, makers’ and city view stamps, and mar marks. Assembly marks and makers’ stamps both were used to convey certain information, and while the assembly marks were used as part of the construction process neither of them are directly related to the techniques of production.336 Mar marks were created as a direct result of creating the objects on which they are found, but are purely accidental. Although they had no direct impact on how a piece was made they are interesting in how they show the state of the tools in the armourer’s workshop.

Assembly marks had nothing to do with the actual shaping of the plates, but were used by armourers to indicate various attributes of individual armour plates to aid in their assembly.337 They are common and come in an array of forms, but their precise meaning is not always clear. The difficulty is compounded by later repairs,

334

Price, TOMAR, pp. 471-72 and Marc Rengarth, ‘A Treatise on the Historical Development, Defensive Consequences and Method of Construction of the Leg Defences Used During the Middle Ages in Western Europe’, Hammer, 30 (1989), 33-51 (p. 45).

335

See Figure 113. 336

These ‘stamps’ are usually called makers’ marks or armourers’ marks, but to avoid confusion with construction marks from making armour they will be referred to as stamps.

337

These marks will exclusively be referred to as ‘assembly marks’ and not ‘construction marks’, also to avoid confusion.

modifications, and restorations but even so they are useful as an indicator of a small part of the process: reminding the armourer which plates belonged together, sometimes in what order, because when not yet assembled it can be very difficult to determine what goes where due to the similarity of lames.

The most common assembly mark is the notch, cut into the edge of a plate with a chisel or file, which is seen on both the interior and exterior of a piece. The second type of mark is the punched dot or dimple, usually round from a blunt punch but also occasionally triangular, perhaps from the corner of a chisel. There are some other anomalous mark types, described below, but nearly all the assembly marks encountered are of these two types. Some modern marks are made of shallow scratches which are the result of restoration work.

Assembly marks were useful to the armourer in several ways. They indicated in what order plates were to be riveted together and they also were used to differentiate left and right components, such as with arm harnesses, and to indicate a piece belonged to a particular suit or set of pieces. AL.90, a polder mitten for the joust from c. 1500, is an example of assembly marks which are most likely to denote a side, single notches clearly visible on the inside narrow edges of the lames, couter, and upper cannon, on the exterior of the plates. The two exceptions are the lower cannon and the lame connecting couter to upper cannon; possible explanations for their absence show how even

assembly marks can be used to illustrate the history of an object.

The lack of a notch on the lower cannon is logical given that this is a piece of specialised jousting armour and is further evidence of their use to denote left and right; the right-hand lower cannon would have been a completely different shape from the left, and so no differentiating mark was required. This is not necessarily so on the other plates, so why was there no notch on the upper lame? The plate matches with all the

other pieces, so rather than being the result of a modern restoration it could have been a mistake or oversight on the part of the armourer or, more likely given that this is a piece of jousting armour, it may be indicative of working-life replacement.

Some assembly marks seem to indicate that two separable objects belong together, as in the case of the left pauldron on the Avant armour and its reinforcing plate, which is held on with a simple staple and pin. The main plate of the pauldron has three notches on the rear edge, as does the rear edge of the two upper lames and the reinforcing plate. In contrast, the right pauldron has no clear assembly marks.

It is not only separable objects which are so marked but also plates which are affixed permanently to one another. A particularly interesting example is the fifteenth- century sallet IV.499, which has a pivoting visor. To each side of the point of the tail and at each side of the medial crease on the visor, filed into the bottom edge, are three notches.338 This interesting pattern, two sets of three on each component, is neither decorative nor does it denote a side, but is only to show that these pieces belong together for the purposes of assembly. The very smooth, rounded edges of the notches suggest that they were created before the finishing stages. The armourer may have used them to make sure the polisher or assembler knew that the two plates belonged together, or even to mark that they were intended for a particular patron. It is impossible to know whether this helmet was originally made together with a full suit which also had these marks.

There are many other examples of this type of assembly mark. III.1282, an Italian breastplate from c. 1470 has six notches on the lower edge of the plackart and each fauld lame and six filed into the neck roll of the upper plate, and on the plackart and fauld a sequential series of punched dots which, given that the lower set are visible on the exterior and were made after the plates were finished, suggest that they are later

338

marks from working life or later restorations. The notches are not sequential, hardly an issue with the very different parts of a breastplate but giving no indication of order for the fauld, and only show that they all belong to the same object. Similarly, the fauld of III.96, a heavy late fifteenth-century breastplate for the gestech form of the joust, has three notches on each of its three lames. Finally, the bevor to II.168 has a series of six notches on the gorget plate and the chin-piece, the notches on the gorget plate arranged in two sets of three to either side of the central cusp, similar to IV.499.339

A more common use of these marks is to mark order of assembly, often for only a small portion of a piece. III.732, a pauldron also for the gestech form of the joust and from the same period as III.96, has sequential notches on four of its five lames, the lack of a notch on the top lame perhaps denoting the start of the sequence, or zero. On AL.23 224, a cuisse and poleyn, the lames are marked from one to four, starting with the bottom-most lame and working up.

A particularly interesting example of the use of assembly marks is found on II.6, one of the foot combat armours of Henry VIII.340 The narrow splints covering the backs of the knees are covered in all the possible assembly marks: the edges are notched, there are punched dimples, and there are several scratched marks. Their placement is

irregular; the numbering is not sequential and skips plates on the right leg, and neither the notches nor the punched dots are consistent. These irregularities stem largely from the unique history of this particular armour, which was left in an unfinished state until it was finally assembled after the sixteenth century.341 The rivets currently in place are newer even then that, making analysis of the marks problematic. The scratches are certainly modern, from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, but the notches

339

Leeds, RA, II.168 B. 340

See Figure 115. 341

and dimples may be sixteenth- or seventeenth-century. They do not correspond with each other, and there is no reason that both would have been required by the original armourer.

It is most probable that the notches are related to the original manufacture. They are the most sequential and most numerous, and their placement is more in keeping with the likely sequence of construction. There is nothing substantial to indicate that the dimples are earlier or later than the notches except that the notches are more in keeping with usual armourer’s practice. In addition the dimples are large, surprisingly deep, and widely and unevenly spaced. In this they are not in keeping with the character of the notches, and are more likely from the period when the armour was first assembled. They are certainly earlier than the scratched numerals.

While the leg harness of II.6 is an excellent example of the major difficulties encountered with assembly marks, its history makes it a somewhat exceptional piece. However, it should be noted that assembly marks are by no means universal and many pieces of armour have no evidence whatsoever of their use. What, then, is their

particular value and why are there so many pieces without them? Assembly marks are not so much directions to the armourer as they are mnemonics, simply reminding the armourer what plates belonged together, and in some instances in what order.

Their use can be taken as a means of transmitting information to another individual who was also involved in a given object’s creation. Their lack can be taken to mean that the armourer did not feel it necessary to have the reminder, or that they were created in a way that has been lost. Shallow dimples can be lost through

corrosion, and other hypothetical marks such as shallow scratches or marks made with lead would have been removed during polishing. In some rare cases the marks may simply be hidden, such as by an internal leather or by being cut into the overlapping

edge. Such is the case on III.828, a fifteenth-century cuisse and poleyn which has two notches cut into the lower edge and three notches cut into the upper edge of the poleyn. The Avant armour also has notches cut into the edges of the poleyn which are nearly invisible.342

The next types of mark found on armour which are not a result of manufacture are the various stamps added as a signature or to denote origin or acceptability by a guild. Makers’ stamps serve many functions, particularly as the signature of a single armourer and the approval stamp of cities where armourers worked, especially

Augsburg and Nuremburg. In most cases the name attached to the mark has been lost, or is only hypothesised.

An early attempt to collect and publish the various armourers’ marks was made by the Baron de Cosson in his, ultimately unpublished, Dictionary of Armourers and Weaponmakers.343His index would have made possible not only the easy referencing of marks for identification, but also cross-referencing marks to look for similarities and possible relationships between marks.

The personal stamps of armourers have been very useful in the attribution of armour, for example a previously unattributed backplate which bears the stamp of Jorg Treytz, covered by a shoulder strap until discovered by Dr Karen Watts.344 The famous armour of Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol made by Lorenz Helmschmied was not

attributed until the 1940s when his stamp was found on the sallet.345 A previously unattributed stamp was able to be identified as belonging to Hans Blarer the Younger by Pierre Terjanian, using the records of the city of Basel. The stamp on a sallet in the

342

See Figure 116. 343

This is the de Cosson Index, now held by the Royal Armouries, Leeds. 344

Leeds, RA, III.1284, personal communication with Karen Watts, 2010. 345

Bruno Thomas, ‘Lorenz Colman (Recte Helmschmid), Armourer of Augsburg’, in Bruno Thomas, Gesammelte Schriften zur Historischen Waffenkunde, 2 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1977), I, 611-16 (p. 615).

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has a stamp closely mirroring the arms used by the Blarer family and which may be ascribed to the proper place and time.346 Not all discoveries of stamps lead to identification, however. The author discovered a

previously unknown stamp on a great helm in the Royal Armouries which belonged to an armourer who is as yet unidentified, though probably English.347

City stamps were the mark of a particular guild, and could indicate that the piece had passed inspection and was made in that city. In Nuremberg, all the armour made ‘had to be approved for quality and stamped by the Guild before sale, with the mark of the arms of Nuremberg after 1499’, and likewise the Augsburg guild had a panel of four view masters.348

As important as makers’ and city stamps are in the study of armour, it must be remembered that the majority of pieces of armour do not have any at all. This is true of pieces from the lowest quality armour for foot soldiers to the highest quality armour made for kings and emperors. Those pieces at the higher end of the scale demonstrate how the stamps differ from artists’ signatures. While a piece of art without a signature will be of much less value and prestige than one with a signature, a piece of armour of even the highest grade does not require a stamp.349 Armourers at court workshops did not need to mark their work because of its prestige, and an assumption that if, for example, Maximilian I wore a piece of armour, it was the work of Konrad Seusenhofer. Today we can identify these pieces though provenance or style, and pieces which cannot be definitely attributed to any particular armourer are not diminished in value or quality.

346

Pierre Terjanian, ‘Armour Made in Basel: A Fifteenth-Century Sallet Attributed to Hans Blarer the Younger’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 36 (2001), 155-59 (pp. 155-57). 347

Leeds, RA, AL.30 2. See Figure 117. 348

Williams and de Reuck, The Royal Armoury at Greenwich, p. 20. 349

The final type of marks found on armour is mar marks, which are uncommon, much more so than assembly marks and stamps. These marks were created when a tool face, either stake or hammer, had a deep scratch or nick in it. Mar marks have not been examined by scholars, indeed their existence is only alluded to in modern metalworking books through the injunction to keep tool faces smooth to avoid them. As stated by Untracht, ‘If a working surface becomes nicked, this defect will be imparted to any metal placed over that position and struck with a hammer’.350 The same holds true with hammer faces. These marks occur very infrequently, but offer an otherwise

unattainable glimpse at the condition of the tools of the armourer at the exact moment of an object’s creation.

There are very few objects with these marks, most likely because the medieval armourers kept their tools in good enough condition to prevent them. This is evident from the piece with smooth enough tool marks to see that the tool faces were clean, but one object, the left pauldron of the Avant armour, actually has evidence of cleaning the tool face. In a series of marks on the main plate, which are deeper than the surrounding marks owing to the hammer being tilted and the edge digging into the plate, there are three lines in each mark which are the result of a file being used on the hammer face.351 These filed scratches were not fully polished away and as a result left a ‘ghost’ in relief on the plate.

The Avant armour, in fact, is notable for its large number of mar marks. In addition to the ones just described, there are marks in the arms, couter reinforce, and further marks on both pauldrons. These marks are all of the more typical small round or oblong shape, which appear to have been mostly on hammers but some may have been from stakes. The lames of each pauldron both have the same small round bump, in the

350

Untracht, Jewellery, pp. 242-43. 351

same location in each mark, showing that it was the exact same hammer that made each lame.352

There were three other objects found to have mar marks during the course of study. The first was the Lyle basinet, which has a few long raised marks inside the visor, from the stake over which it was planished. The second was a backplate, III.2446 A, which has a number of L-shaped marks over one shoulder. Finally, the Pembridge helm in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has long mar marks on the interior of the cap plate, from a fairly large nick on the face of the planishing stake.353