Armour Diagrams

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UPDATED September 16th, 2019.

Names and locations of the individual parts of medieval armours.

There is no other source on the internet to find this information at this time. More diagrams using actual photos will be added later. For now we will start with some diagrams scanned from a variety of books. This page still under construction. Latest update September 16, 2019.

More to come! German style gothic armour diagrams. There are none that I have found. I will make more soon using photos of a couple of gothic armours and add all the appropriate names of pieces, using two books as reference: The Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms & Armor by George Stone as reference and also The Armourer and His Craft by Charles Ffolkes. See also the Armour Dictionary at: http://www.beautifuliron.com/armour_dictionary.htm, for a glossary of names of the parts of armours.

The Diagrams:

    Equestrian armour  (armour for knight on horseback) photographs from a visit to the Germanisches museum in Nuremburg, Germany. On this armour the bevor is snapped or clamped to the top of the breastplate. Fastening the bevor this way prevented the opponents' lance from penetrating between the top of the breastplate under the bevor. The Hohenschwangau armour used this type of fastening but the snap on the breastplate of that armour has since been removed or destroyed. Spelling in left picture corrected January 8th, 2005.

Names of the parts are mostly English and occasionally other languages. Some of the parts have no English names.

    Equestrian armour (armour for knight on horseback) diagram from The Art of Chivalry. Authored by Nickel, Pyhrr, and Tarassuk and copyrighted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. ISBN 0-917418-67-0. Click the picture at left to see larger view.

Names of the parts are in English only.

    Milanese style Equestrian armour diagram from Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight by David Edge & John Paddock. ISBN 0-517-64468-1. Excellent book on history and construction of armour. Click the picture at left to see larger view.

Names of the parts are in English only.

    Maximillian style armour from The Armourer & His Craft by Charles Ffolkes. Published by Dover Books. ISBN 0-486-25851-3. Horse armour also from the same time period. Click the picture at left to see larger view.

Names of the parts are given in 5 languages; English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

    Equestrian armour from Harnisch Und Helm by the Landeszeughaus museum in Graz Austria. ISBN unknown- booklet is available from the Landeszeughaus museum gift shop.

Names of the parts of the armour are in English and German.

    Parts of the horse from a Autumn 2005 Draft Horse Journal magazine article by Bruce Roy called Caveat emptor. The article deals with the conformation of horses and had this little gem of a diagram showing the parts of a horses. I added it here because it has information relevant to the discussion of horse armours.

Names all in english.

Latest update September 16, 2019.

There must be more books available with armour diagrams but I don't know of them. I will try to add them here when I find them.

Page created November 15th, 2001.