Saturday 28 March 2015

Oh. Those Short Knights...

Jane Adams, Crime novelist
This is Jane Adams, Crime novelist, photographed at a recent RLF do. She's wearing a beautiful cut steel pendant made by her husband - but look at what she's holding.
          It's a miniature suit of armour - the back and chest plates. It's one third scale. (I apologise for the poor photo - entirely my fault.)
          Jane's husband, Julian Adams, used to be an electronic engineer, and began making armour as a hobby. Some hobby. He researched, and taught himself the techniques needed - though he does use power-tools.
          Soon, as passionately loved, creative hobbies do, armoury started taking up most of his time and money - so he went professional, and now, as Swordweaver Armoury, creates suits of armour for collectors, museums, and re-enactors.
Detail

          At the moment, he's creating some miniature knights on horseback, with to-scale suits of armour for both knights and horses. Jane is assisting by stitching tiny sets of undercrackers, shirts and breeches for the short knights to wear under their armour.
          When Jane told me about this, some weeks ago, I was fascinated and asked to see photos - which she duly sent me. But when I went to the RLF poetry evening Jane produced a soft cloth bag and, with a flourish, drew from it, this little steel body-suit.
          It was exquisite, with every detail present. The brightly polished steel shone.
          Below are the photos Jane sent me. In this first one, you can see that the horses are wearing helmets. (I don't know what the proper name is for armour a horse wears on its head.)


 Here, below, you have a somewhat better view of the tiny helmets, breastplates, greavcs and other body armour laid out beside the horses, ready for the knights.


Here's a still better view of those gleaming, shining steel suits.


A beautiful slide show of Julian's beautiful armour and jewellery can be seen on  his website.

I really like the look of this 'random' jewellery, made of steel with brass inlay.

https://sites.google.com/site/steelbluejewellery/randomrange
Julian Adams, jewellery

6 comments:

Joan Lennon said...

Exquisite!

madwippitt said...

The head bit is the chamfron and the armour that goes along the neck the crinet. With much variation of spelling. But aren't these really gorgeous! What wonderful things if you don't have room for a full size suit of armour in your stately semi! Want one ...

Susan Price said...

I never knew those words, Madwippitt. Chamfron and crinet - what great words! It's good to have someone knowledgable comment. I'd love to have one too, but I'm scared to even think about what a fair price might be... They are collector's items.

madwippitt said...

It's all down to an obsessive childhood Sue ...

Susan Price said...

Obsessive about armoured horses? - Cool.

Sue Purkiss said...

There's something about miniature things, isn't there - the workmanship is so exquisite, and lovingly done.