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Description: | Artist: Unknown; Date(s): circa 1620; Classification(s): armour, close helmet, hammered, formed of a skull with a peak and medially-ridged bevor attached to it by common pivots, and a single gorget-plate front and rear; hammered, shaped, riveted, with fluted, pierced, file-roped, incised and embossed decoration, with recessed borders; Acquisition: bequeathed by Henderson, James Stewart, 1933-03-16, J.S. Henderson Bequest [HEN.M.67-1933]
Description: Close helmet, for heavy cavalry use. Formed of a skull with a peak and bevor attached to it by common pivots, and a single gorget-plate front and rear. The rounded skull is formed in two halves joined by a turn to the right along a low, roped medial comb that rises to a point at its apex. The point was originally fitted with a finial, now missing. The skull is decorated with radiating flutes of V-shaped section. It is pierced with four ventilation-holes at each side and fitted with a plume-holder at the nape. The pivots that retain the peak and bevor are modern. Each consists of a screw with a rounded cross-cut, quatrefoil head and a square internal nut. The nearly flat peak projects forward to an obtuse point and is decorated with a medial rib. It is shaped at the brow to fit over the flutes of the skull. The medially-ridged bevor is strongly shaped to the point of the chin and has a deep U-shaped face opening. The face-opening is covered by a detachable, falling buffe of two downward-overlapping lames that is sprung over two studs projecting from the sides of the bevor at its lower corner. The upper edge of the buffe is cut with a broad, shallow notch, forming the lower edge of a vision-slit. The upper lame of the buffe is embossed below the vision-slit with a prominent, transverse belt that is cut with vertical ventilation-slots and decorated at its centre with a scallop-shell. The lames of the falling buffee are each supported at the right of the chin by a sprung rectangular stud. The helmet is fitted with a single gorget-plate front and rear, each of which is embossed to simulate two lames. The lower edge of each curves down to an obtuse central point. The gorget-plates are attached to the flanged lower edges of the bevor and skull by modern round-headed rivets with internal washers at each side.
The main edges of the helmet are decorated with file-roped inward turns, in most cases accompanied by recessed borders. The borders of the gorget-plates rise to central cusps. The subsidiary edges of the helmet are decorated with single incised lines. | Format: | text/html | License: | http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/terms.htm | Publisher: | The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK | Rights holder: | The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK | Subjects: | armour Unknown close helmet | Temporal: | name=early 17th Century; start=1620; end=1620 | Source: | Fitzwilliam Museum | Creator: | The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK | Identifier: | http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/opacdire... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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