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The Journal of the Mail Research Society The Journal of The Mail Research Society Vol. I, No. I JULY 2003 Furthering education one link at a time... ISSN No. 1544-4333 The Mail Research Society 109 Wilson Ave SE St. Cloud, MN 56304 USA [email protected] The Journal of THE MAIL RESEARCH SOCIETY Volume. I, No. I July, 2003 CONTENTS Robert C. Savage Introduction p. 1 Erik D. Schmid Link Details from Articles of Mail in the Wallace Collection p. 2 Tobias Capwell A Fragment of Scottish Mail p. 21 Robert W. Reed Jr. Armour Purchases and Lists from the Howard Household Books p. 25 Introduction It is with great pleasure that I write this brief introduction to what will surely become an in- valuable contribution to the field of arms and armour studies and in particular the study of mail armour; The Journal of the Mail Research Soci- ety. Despite the long history and wide geographi- cal use of mail, from the 6th or 5th century BC to the present day, this form of armour has suffered from a comparative paucity of accessible studies. Although references to mail armour occur in all the major texts concerning armour it is usually just a passing reference. The large holdings of the Royal Armouries library, for instance, list only about 40 specific entries on the subject. Why this is so is not clear; maybe a Norman cav- alryman depicted in mail hauberk is not quite as appealing as his late-15th century German coun- terpart, pictured in full plate armour. Maybe the aesthetics of the sculptural qualities found in plate armour, as well as its more complex con- struction techniques, are more highly regarded than those associated with a ‘shirt’ of mail. Whatever, this has not always been so, after all one of the first great exhibitions of armour, held in London in 1880, was entitled The Exhibition of Ancient Helmets and Examples of Mail. It also comes as something of a shock to realise that what are probably the best known papers on the manufacture of European mail, by E Martin Bur- gess, appeared some 50 years ago! With exciting discoveries currently being made about the construction of mail, such as the galvanisation of Indian mail, the inception of this Journal provides a new and long overdue forum for informed discussion concerning mail armour. My heartiest congratulations to Erik Schmid for taking this idea forward. I wish the Journal well and, like other readers, look forward to the following issues and their contents. Robert C Woosnam-Savage Curator of European Edged Weapons Royal Armouries, Leeds, England, 2003 For further information regarding the Royal Ar- mouries visit: www.armouries.org.uk 1 Link Details from Articles of Mail in the Wallace Collection BY ERIK D. SCHMID Several examples of mail from the Wallace Collection, London, have been selected for dis- cussion in order to explore some of the intrica- cies of this enigmatic form of armour. Although the main focus of this paper will be the differ- ences in link design within this group of items, other areas such as tailoring will also be dis- cussed. Of the twenty mail items in the collec- tion, six will be examined here.1 This paper is not meant to be an in depth examination of each piece; rather it is a brief overview. To fully appreciate mail, one must look at the particular garment as a whole. It is very impor- tant to pay special attention to the tailoring and to the individual links; each link is a work of art in its own right. No two riveted links in any mail garment are exactly the same. This is because each was made by hand using the simplest tools. Even so, mail-makers were clearly able to create individual links of iron that, for all intents and purposes, are almost identical. This alone is a testament to their skill as expert craftsmen. The Making of a Link of Mail Throughout this article individual pieces of mail will be referred to as being of either high or low quality. To explore the differences between the two categories, an explanation of the specific construction techniques that yield certain physi- cal characteristics must be presented. Mail is thought to have originated in the Celtic areas of Europe sometime around the fifth century b.c.e.2 It is essentially a metal fabric made up of interlocking links made either of wrought iron or steel. Links made of gold, latten, or some other yellow metal were sometimes added as decoration, usually forming borders on the sleeve edges, collar and/or hem. Each link is connected to four others (Figure 1). Though there are variations,3 mail made in this fashion is by far the most common. Wire is used as the base material from which the individual links are made. The most common way to make wire is with a draw-plate, a block of metal or stone having a series of tapered holes, each hole being of a slightly decreasing diameter. A piece of high-quality wrought iron is first ham- 4 1. Reproduction mail made from 0.050” (1.27mm) mered into the shape of a rod. This rod is pure iron wire. (Photo courtesy of the author) 2 worked until it is thin enough to be passed through the largest of the holes. The rod is then repeatedly passed through the succession of holes until it is of the desired size. The length of wire is first wound around a mandrel of desired size to form a coil. The individual links are then cut from this coil with either a hammer and chisel or with an hand-cutter of some sort. A pinching-type cutter seemed to work well when the author attempted to reproduce links of a rea- sonably accurate form.5 To facilitate the remain- ing manufacturing steps, the links need to be softened by heating them to a yellow heat. This can be done by stringing them onto a length of wire and placing them in a bed of hot coals. They should then be allowed to cool slowly. Once cool the ends of each link are lapped.6 How this lap- ping was accomplished is unclear. When the outer and inner diameters are measured, many original links are shown to have very consistent dimensions.7 The use of a single pair of tongs can yield very similar, and also very consistent, results.8 After the links are lapped, either the entire link or just the lapped area needs to be flattened. This flattening of the lapped ends is required to create an area that can be successfully pierced with a rivet-hole. To pierce this area, the use of a highly tapered drift is required. This drift must be hardened and tempered in order to per- form this task flawlessly over thousands of repe- titions. An improperly prepared drift will either break or bend after only a few links. Keeping a drift from breaking has as much to do with proper technique on the part of the craftsman as it does on the physical properties of the metal. A large portion of medieval mail appears to have the ends of its links closed with wedge-shaped rivets. Into the hole punched using the drift is placed just such a rivet. This tiny wedge can be made either from flattened wire or from strips cut from small plates of wrought iron. Generally all rivets seem to have been made from low-carbon wrought iron, even when the rest of the link is hardened and tempered steel. The reason for this is unclear. However it may be due to the fact that a low carbon wrought iron rivet is much more malleable and thus easier to peen than one made from high carbon steel. Using a special pair of tongs that has a dimple carved into one side of the jaws, the joint is then peened shut. This dimple is what gives the rivet its distinctive shape. In addition to the rivet, these tongs also give shape to the entire lapped area. The use of tongs fastens the joint much more securely than 3 if it were only peened with a hammer strike to the backside of the rivet while the other side is placed over a formed depression in a block of metal. For a mail link to be considered of a high quality it should have a very uniform transition from the lapped joint area into the rest of the link. In addition to the joint area, the remaining portion of the link should also have an even cross-section. Links of the same garment should also have uniform dimensional qualities when compared with one another. The rivet should be peened in such a way so as to be completely formed into a domed shape and not be so long as to be simply folded over. Mail of a lower qual- ity, among other things, will not have these char- acteristics.9 Although mail could be manufactured with relative ease (the procedures are not particularly complex), it did take considerable time to pro- duce; this time factor made it an expensive com- modity. Until armour fell out of use mail seems to have been one of the most expensive types of protection.10 This was especially true if the mail was made of steel rather than iron. A2 This is a very fine example of a fifteenth- century mail shirt (Figure 2). It has short elbow- length sleeves with a body length that extends to the middle of the thigh.
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