Dying armour?

[Jeremiah Guffey]

I was just wondering, can someone give me info on what colurs and how the armours were dyed?

I have heard that plate armour was generally able to be coloured Black (via using oil/burning it into the material) , blue, and a gold'ish colour.

How common was it for someone to dye their plate armour these colours? and more so, how did they generally do it for the different colours? (For blue did they use Woad or indigo or such?)

This kind of thing I've had a bit of a problem trying to dig up info on, any would be very appericated <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />.

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

Well, our official consultant, the curator of the Arms and Armour museum in Budapest, said that colouring was not common at all. Highly polished, shiny armour was the standard, for knights should be shiny and polished, so they thought. Blueing was invented in the renaissance (so a blued sallet is almost out of place, not to speak of other, older designs), and browning in the 30 years war for munitions grade armour (like the Pappenheimer in Ingolstadt). Blackening is completelly unhistorical, for it was invented in the age of midern firearms.
Sometimes the coloured some parts of the armour, painting iconography and heraldic symbols, but they used paint, and not some dying technics.

Anyway, blueing is a chemical process, it is actually a kind of stain, and is done with acid. There is a blueish colour if the metell is heat threatened, but that does not really last.
Browning was done with oil burned onto the material, while the real blackening (of course you can do many things to make metal look black) was done with acid as well, so I learned. There are today a number of modern ways, used in the industry and by modern armourers.
Szab

[M Wallgren]

I´ve seen pictures of some Sallet helmets that was completly painted.

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=2700&amp;highlight=black+german+sallet

[Erik D. Schmid]

Szabolcs Waldmann,

I think that colouring of armour was more common than most think. However, much of that is personal opinion however. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

With regards to your assertion that blackening armour is not historical, what would say about the harness in the following thread?

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=46753&amp;highlight=

[Brian Hunt]

How about the well know "black and white" harness? such as this picture of a burgonet?


Armour has also been known to be painted for rust protection.

Sometimes it was covered with cloth


sometimes it was blued

http://www.ageofarmour.com/blackgoth.html

laters.

Brian Hunt.

[Brian Hunt]

Article on how to blue armour

http://www.arador.com/articles/bluing.html

Brian Hunt
GFS

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

Hm.

Again, his objection was "not that common". We were talkin' about dying and not painting, no? The Sallet was painted, I actually saw another one painted this way in Vienna. The Black-and-white Armour of the 16th century was, in my knowledge, painted as well.
I did not see any historical blueing up to date made before the 16th or 17th century, then again, such can fade with the time. That I can say after looking through the Armour of the Graz, Vienna, Ingolstadt, Senj, Eger and Budapest museums of Arms &amp; Armour. Yes, Armets tend to be coloured in a way, and so do munition grades from the 30 years war. Then again, it's just my voice against anybody else's, and we all can be wrong for in 400 years many things can happen to a piece of metal.
greets,
Szabolcs

[Brian Hunt]

Hi Szabolcs,

It is my understanding, that one of the problems is that a lot of historical pieces of armour were altered and polished by early collectors and museums. Some of the few munitions grade pieces that we have were actually polished to take out the hammer marks in order to create a "proper" finish. <img src="/forum/images/icons/shocked.gif" alt="" /> So, it can sometimes be hard to say what the original finish actually was on a piece unless we have written records about it's history and the amount of restoration work done to it. Incomplete suits had pieces added to them so as to complete them, and unrelated pieces were often combined by well meaning curators, new pieces were created to finish incomplete suits, etc. With all of that in mind, according to my studies and to the best of my knowledge, these various finishes were used at these various times. We have evidence of painted pieces as far back as the 12th century, and it was commonly done throughout the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The earliest evidence we have of blued or blackened armour is the 15th century although some researchers believe the practice may have begun in the 14th century. Fabric covered armour was popular during the 14th and 15th centuries, especially in Italy. And of course additional decorations have been used on armour from etching and engraving of both brass edging and armour, to repouse and chasing, to gilding.

I do wish that I had the opportunity to see as many of the museums that you have, I have primarily seen a couple of original pieces left over from the spanish conquistedors in museums out in the Western United States, and this summer I finally got to see the armour collection in the Met at New York. I am planning further trips to see the collections in the other musuems we have in the East to further expand my studies. I hope one day to tour the museums of Europe, but so far my life doesn't allow for enough money to make such a trip.

Thanks for the exchange of info, I have had an interest in armour since I was very young. When I was 17, I drug a volkswagon body home and proceeded to cut it apart to turn it into a suit of armour. While I learned alot about metal working on that first suit, I cannot say that I turned out a very good harness on that attempt. I have since continued to make armour and have gotten ok at it, but I am not in the ball park of some of the high end stuff being turned out by truly talented armourers of today.

cheers,

Brian Hunt
GFS