Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/104



Showing the knightly chapel-de-fer in use. English, about 1475

hardest possible quality, dark and lustrous in colour. Hefner-Alteneck was probably correct in considering this helmet, which came from a castle on the Rhine and bears a fleur-de-lys as an armourer's mark, to be of Swiss workmanship, dating from about 1440-90. M. Demmin, in his ''Guide des Amateurs d'Armes'' (page 283, No. 83), states that there is a duplicate of this chapel in the Museum of Copenhagen. Next to be examined is a strangely simple iron hat, also Swiss in workmanship and of very characteristic form. It is fairly light and of very large proportions, and must have been heavily padded inside. The holes for the rivets which secured this padding are still visible. The exterior surface was originally plated with tin to prevent its rusting. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 416) where there is another very graceful specimen with a falling waved brim and dating from the middle of the XVth century (Fig 416). In the same museum is a singularly graceful head-piece of the same order but of a different type. The brim of this example is not of uniform breadth and has a curious curved line; it is wider over the ears, where it is compressed in to afford them greater protection. The skull-piece is gracefully decorated with simple broad, spiral channels. This helmet was considered by Signor Ressman, in whose collection it once was, to be Burgundian and to belong to the middle of the XVth century (Fig. 417). A good many chapawes, more or less of this type and of this date, are in existence, and are for the most part the head-pieces of the soldiery. One special type comes exclusively from Spain, a specimen of which we illustrate (Fig. 418), now in the collection of