Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/200



Probably German work and possibly by Jacob Topf of Innsbruck H 251, Musée d'Artillerie, Paris

accredited to the Archduke Carl von Steiermark (ante, page 75, Fig. 1154). Now these suits are recorded as the work of that mysterious armourer Jacob Topf of Innsbruck, who according to Wendelin Boeheim was born about 1530 and died about 1587. To the English collector the name of Topf recalls to mind the Greenwich school and that large series of harnesses made for representative English families of the close of the XVIth century which are familiar to us through the Jacobe MS. in the Victoria and Albert Museum. We have already discussed the improbability of there being any connection between Topf and Jacobe (ante, pages 12 et seqq.). The work of Jacob Topf on the suits in the Vienna Armoury is precisely like the decoration found upon the casque to which we are alluding in the Musée d'Artillerie, consisting of gilding, flat tool chasing, a little embossing, and lines of incrusted silver studs or pearls. The shape of the casque certainly shows a strong