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The Myth of the Knight in Shining Armour | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:30
My name is Germ. This is Germ warfare, the battle
0:33
of ideas. The thing we're going to talk
0:36
about is something I've been working on for many years
0:40
quietly, and I published on it because I was leaving the field.
0:45
And the way I, I phrased it was as I sort of opened the door to
0:49
leave before I let it close, I lobbed a hand grenade in behind
0:53
me and then let the door close. And it it caused one hell of a
0:58
stir when I did, you know. My favorite kind of stir.
1:03
And unfortunately, as you alluded to last time, this is
1:08
going to disappoint a lot of damsels in distress, isn't it?
1:15
Are you telling me that there won't be a knight in shining
1:18
armour, Chris? Yes.
1:22
Is that the end of the podcast now?
1:25
All right. Thank you for joining.
1:27
Me, it's been lovely. See you again.
1:31
I don't think I've ever spoken to somebody with your skill set.
1:35
So just quickly, what is your bio?
1:37
Right. Well, I was retired now a master
1:45
armourer, the first master armourer in England since the
1:49
17th century to have their mastership recognized.
1:53
And an armourer isn't, not in the modern sense of the world,
1:57
an armourer as in somebody who makes suits of armour or pieces
2:01
of armour. And I did that for four decades,
2:04
started off by making pieces and then began restoring pieces and
2:09
working at the highest levels. So it, and it always was a
2:13
highly specialised craft. This isn't something that back
2:16
in the Middle Ages blacksmiths did.
2:18
It was absolutely banned. It was a a specialised craft
2:22
here in Italy of armourers and swordsmiths and it was so
2:26
specialised, even in Germanic states, for example, armourers
2:30
had to be qualified to make individual pieces one after the
2:34
other. You couldn't just you're
2:36
qualified so you can make a whole armour, you could be
2:38
qualified to make helmets or gauntlets or breastplates and so
2:42
on. So I came to that after what you
2:46
might call an interesting childhood, and something I
2:48
didn't tell you before that is I'm the son of a Bletchley Park
2:52
code breaker that was Station X. Or say that.
2:57
Say that again. A what?
2:59
My father worked at somewhere known during World War 2 as
3:04
Station X, which was at Bletchley Park and that was
3:08
where they broke the German Enigma codes for the first
3:10
computers. Where's, Sorry, where's, what do
3:14
you say? Bletchley Park?
3:15
Where's that? Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's
3:18
just the South of London. It's a stately home.
3:20
It's now a museum. And it was absolutely top secret
3:25
during the war. And that was where they built
3:27
the first computers to crack the Enigma code, which they did.
3:31
But without, without, without derailing the podcast.
3:34
He was more than that. He was a Royal Naval officer.
3:39
He was a Lieutenant or sub Lieutenant and I work in
3:44
archives as the the listeners are going to hear very shortly.
3:47
And I tried finding him in the in the British military archives
3:51
and he's not there. He's just invisible.
3:54
Oh wow. And.
3:56
Persona non grata. No, it's probably what's called
4:00
AD. Notice he's he's just been
4:02
officially vanished because whatever he was doing was too
4:05
sensitive. He didn't talk about this during
4:09
his lifetime and after he died we found out from my aunt, who's
4:14
also gone now, that he was in France 3 days ahead of D-Day in
4:23
in ahead of the invasion. So whatever he was up to, it was
4:27
secret stuff. That is insane.
4:34
And never said, never said a word about it.
4:37
We found we found out a lot where we are.
4:40
So that enigma that it's the only thing I know about it is
4:43
from that movie with it's a big machine where they do basically
4:47
a series of switches of ones and zeros until they can eventually
4:50
figure out what's been communicated.
4:52
Is that? That's kind of correct, isn't
4:53
it? Yeah, One thing I do know about
4:59
my father is he took one of the first Enigma machines off the
5:02
Germans himself. He was, he was on a ship in the
5:09
Mediterranean and they took EU boat U571 and that had the
5:14
Enigma machine on board. Sure.
5:19
Wow. OK, so your father had a
5:23
fascinating history, and so do you.
5:27
Well, that so anyway. What's next?
5:29
So what's, what's next is from him I got the love of history.
5:33
And you know, as as a kid I got into war gaming, military
5:37
modelling, all that sort of thing.
5:39
My first job was working in a shop selling model soldiers.
5:43
And then I in 1985 I graduated up to full size ones, as I put
5:48
it, I, I'd always played around with metal at school and my
5:52
father's workshop self-taught. I have to stress, and I just had
5:56
this crazy idea in 1985 that I was going to set up a studio to
6:00
actually start reconstructing armor, and I did.
6:05
Right. And, and and you were saying
6:07
earlier that a few centuries ago when people made armor, they
6:12
only made certain parts of the full piece.
6:16
You do the entire thing. Yeah, I mean, Italian armors
6:19
could do the entire thing. The guilds had different systems
6:22
in different countries, but often this, as I think I
6:26
mentioned to you before, the specialization of the craft at
6:29
the time was to ensure that the quality of the work would be
6:33
absolutely top notch. So in Brescia in the 16th
6:37
century, we know it took twelve people to make a sword.
6:41
So you had a different Craftsman was the bladesmith who actually
6:45
made the blade. Someone else would make pieces
6:47
of the hilt, someone else would make the scabbard, someone else
6:50
would carry out decorations, someone else would engrave the
6:53
blade, and on and on and on. So it was incredibly specialized
6:57
work. And you do the job of all of
7:03
those people. With regard to Alma, yeah, and I
7:07
have produced aged weapons as well.
7:11
I also then from the making point, and this is what's going
7:15
to lead on to the subject of today, from making armour, I
7:19
then went on to restoring it some.
7:22
I began to pick up collectors who would bring me broken pieces
7:26
of armour and say, can you make a new piece for this to, to
7:29
match it? And then it happened for the
7:31
antiques dealers as well. And then museums.
7:35
And by the end of 40 years I was working for the top museums in
7:40
the world, top collectors in the world, working on armour that
7:44
had been made for kings and emperors.
7:47
So just incredible privilege to work on the stuff at that level.
7:52
I mean, it's the. It's.
7:53
Incredibly niche. Yes, it's not, not something I,
7:59
I mentioned to the school's career officer before I left
8:02
school. Not, not the sort of thing you
8:05
can, you can, you know, it's, it's not a career path people
8:10
would normally take. But there are other armours and
8:12
swordsmiths out there now. You know, there are people still
8:16
making. And that is, I suppose, what
8:21
leads us on to the subject of the podcast, which is what armor
8:25
actually look like, and why the idea of the 19 shining armor is
8:30
a complete myth. Yes, but I mean, everything
8:33
we're chatting about kind of creates context because, you
8:36
know, these are the things that people don't even think about.
8:39
What you do can technically be done with machines.
8:44
Yes, and I'm, I'm sure somebody out there is trying to get a 3D
8:48
printer to produce pieces of armor, I'm sure, but that's not
8:52
how they were made originally, obviously.
8:55
And the skill that went into making them originally, it's
8:58
quite phenomenal. And it's, it's worth saying now
9:01
if people have got this horrible idea from Hollywood and the, and
9:05
the TV, the Dharma was heavy and that weapons went through it and
9:10
it was cumbersome. And of course it wasn't it, it
9:13
was protective clothing for professional warriors.
9:17
It was extremely expensive to make and if it didn't work and
9:22
it had hindered their fighting, they wouldn't have used it.
9:27
They even this this is something that surprises a lot of people.
9:30
Armour was proofed. An armour of proof means they
9:35
would complete an armour and then shoot at it with the most
9:39
powerful ballistic weapons of the day, which would mean bows,
9:43
crossbows and firearms. And you'll, you'll often see in
9:47
museums late 16th and 17th century breastplates which have
9:51
got dents in them here on, on the sides at the top, nice round
9:56
dent from a musket ball. And that's because they stood it
9:59
up on a dummy at 30 yards and shot it to prove that you know
10:04
what, to prove it so that it worked.
10:06
And I, I've handled pieces that have gone through what you might
10:10
call really hot action. A breastplate I worked on for a
10:14
client, very, very dear friend now gone.
10:18
It was covered in no proof marks.
10:21
It was proof marked. It was covered in marks from
10:23
bullets. And it had been stabbed by
10:26
something like a Pike or a halberd and it had sword cuts
10:28
across it. So whoever wore that was right
10:31
in the thick of it. And what if I shot my 9 mole or
10:37
hunting rifle at it? That's different, OK.
10:41
So, so the bullets. So the bullets will go through.
10:43
So they will go through. Modern high velocity stuff will
10:47
go through it. Yeah.
10:48
And so now we're going to lead on to another little interesting
10:51
bit of context. You didn't know before either.
10:54
And that is I've made modern armour, anti ballistic, modern
10:58
armour for the police in the UK. I, I, I don't know if they ever
11:03
went into production. I sold the design to them.
11:06
And as part of that, I mean, I know you like your guns and you
11:09
don't know that I've shotguns as well with the Met Police Royal
11:14
Protection Squad. So I had to make a combination
11:17
armor made of titanium plate and Kevlar and we shot at.
11:23
I was given a 357 magnum to shoot at it and a 44 magnum with
11:28
magnum ammunition and wait with the.
11:32
Were you able to? Were you able to shoot them
11:35
while standing and not losing your balance?
11:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it hell of a kick.
11:41
Well done. Absolutely.
11:42
Hell of a kick. Yes, well done.
11:45
And we were going through different designs and it has to
11:48
be said, a lot of the time the bullet went straight through the
11:51
armour out the other side and was still asking where the
11:54
armour was, you know, just straight through.
11:56
Yeah, I'm incredibly powerful. Well, I don't know if you can
12:00
see this, but I sure, yes, this is a, this is a 50 mole.
12:06
Yeah. 50 count. Wow.
12:07
It was a BMG, so I'll bring you, pardon, 50 Cal BMG that I shot
12:12
and yes, the crazy thing, right? So I mean that thing is designed
12:16
to take out, you know, vehicles at a long way away.
12:20
The recoil was almost non existent.
12:24
Really. There was a coffee cup on the
12:28
table to the side of me and it blew off the table.
12:33
Wow services, what a shockwave going naturally.
12:37
So for the longest time in history, armor was used, and it
12:43
was used effectively. Yeah, it worked.
12:46
Yeah, and. And tell me a bit about the
12:49
weight though. I mean, so you would think right
12:52
off the bat that having thick armor is better.
12:56
Depends what it's made of. Armor was originally made of
13:00
iron, and then they moved on to making armor out of steel, now
13:05
with iron. You know you wouldn't, you
13:07
wouldn't be able to walk with iron.
13:09
Well yeah, in in fact, early armor is one way you can easily
13:14
spot fakes if you handle early pieces from the 14th and early
13:19
15th century. They're heavy.
13:22
Helmets are heavy because they were using an inferior material.
13:26
And for the listeners who don't know, the difference between
13:29
iron and steel is that steel has a carbon content and it's got to
13:33
be above point 3.4%. After that you can heat treat it
13:38
to harden it below that doesn't matter how many times you heat
13:41
it up and quench it in oil or water, you're not going to
13:43
harden it at all. So that's that's what they did.
13:48
They moved from an inferior material to a superior material.
13:52
So they were getting lighter and then they began to heat treat
13:55
it. And once they could do that, it
13:56
could become lighter again. OK, so Chris, you said you made
14:04
armor and then you restored it, but I just want to make sure
14:07
that I'm following you absolutely correctly.
14:11
When you say you make or made armor, was it all by hand?
14:15
You did it through the forge, the whole kind of blacksmith
14:19
route. Yes, absolutely it would.
14:23
I mean the concessions to modernity were using power
14:26
shears to cut up the sheets of metal as opposed to using a
14:30
hammer and chisel or using massive manual shears which they
14:35
used to have. So I would do things like that.
14:40
But other than that, yes, it was all hammers and specialised
14:43
anvils that are called stakes. And you have different shapes
14:47
like a sort of big mushroom shape for working a breastplate
14:50
over a ball shape for, for raising up helmet skulls.
14:55
And then you would have things like Half Moon shapes for
14:57
working the, the comb of a helmet in or embossed decoration
15:02
in. So I, I had hundreds of them.
15:05
I actually acquired a lot of originals from a company who
15:09
were closing down currently near where I lived in Colchester in
15:13
England, and they had a lot and some of them came from the Royal
15:16
Armouries in Greenwich. So some of the tools I was using
15:19
were originals from the 16th century.
15:25
And how long would it take you? Me on my own months.
15:31
But the that's not how it was done originally in the, in the
15:37
15th century they, they had a military industrial complex just
15:41
like now. And the the centre of armour
15:44
production in Europe through the 14th and 15th century was the
15:47
city of Milan in northern Italy. And they had hundreds of armours
15:53
working with journeymen. So you would be qualified as a
15:57
master. But then there was a lesser
15:58
stage which was being a journeyman and they would
16:00
journey from workshop to workshop to work for masters.
16:04
And then below them you had apprentices.
16:06
So there were hundreds of armours working in Milan and
16:09
they were producing thousands of armours every year.
16:13
So it's a huge output. Well, you, you even had people
16:16
specialised in making buckles or hinges.
16:20
We know that from their names. There's a a fellow called
16:23
Giovanni della Fibiere recorded in Milan in the 15th century and
16:28
Fibiere A buckles. So that was John who made
16:31
buckles. That was his name.
16:33
That's a career for you. So you were.
16:40
Going to so in the medieval era, was being the a a blacksmith
16:46
like this frowned upon job or was it very elite position to
16:51
have? There, there you go using the.
16:53
I mean, was it? Was it B?
16:54
Word again. Was it?
16:56
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. OK, hang on.
16:58
Let's quickly deal with that blacksmith.
17:00
This. There's a whole context there,
17:02
isn't there? Yes, yes.
17:04
No, I'm not and never was a blacksmith.
17:07
Blacksmiths make wrought iron work.
17:11
And here's another little curveball for you.
17:13
In in America in the 18th century, there were also
17:16
whitesmiths. So blacksmiths would make stuff
17:19
which would be black from the hammer with the scale from the
17:22
forge left on it for outdoor use, and whitesmiths would make
17:26
much finer pieces which would be polished white for use inside
17:29
the house. But, but in my context, no.
17:33
I was specifically an armour and in the Middle Ages and the
17:38
Renaissance, if blacksmiths tried producing armour
17:42
illegally, it would have been illegal.
17:44
The guilds closed them down very quickly.
17:47
Some of the guilds had what was called rights of search, which
17:50
means you could get your door kicked down in the middle of the
17:53
night and agents of the guilds would come in and examine
17:56
everything in your, in your home, which would because they'd
17:59
normally lived over the shop. So, you know, they, they were
18:02
very strict about it. So they were the equivalent to
18:07
the SWOT team. Yes, yes, yes.
18:11
A Tudor, a Tudor SWOT team. Yes.
18:16
FBI. Yeah, something like that.
18:18
Yes, Incidentally, just to draw a few more parallels for the
18:23
listeners, the people who are using this stuff, I mentioned
18:27
the military industrial complex. And in Italy the mercenaries
18:30
were called Conductieri. And so you have a massive arms
18:35
industry making swords, lances, daggers, crossbows, bows, making
18:42
armour, and they're supplying professional armies which are
18:45
private. And as a curious parallel with
18:49
today, the word conductieri means contractor.
18:54
So in just the same way that today we have private military
18:58
contractors, that's exactly what they had in the in the 14th,
19:02
15th and 16th centuries. So nothing's changed.
19:07
No, no, in fact I deal with this in my next book.
19:14
We can perhaps mention at the end about 3 paintings about the
19:17
Battle of San Romano and I demonstrate the whole set up in
19:21
that book. In identifying 3 paintings which
19:23
are of people in armour, I actually demonstrate how the
19:27
whole thing worked, how that the, you know, the, the set up
19:30
to produce the armour and the how it was then supplied to the
19:35
troops, how the troops used it. Because also martial arts were
19:38
used here in in the West as well.
19:39
It's not an oriental thing. There are military manuals from
19:43
the 15th century, a fellow called Fiore de Libri from North
19:49
Italy and he wrote a famous book called The Flower of Battle.
19:53
So the the idea of particular poses, arm locks, holds, blows
20:00
with swords, blows with pole axes, it was all codified.
20:03
So they, these were not, to summarize, these were not people
20:06
lumbering around in really heavy armour, you know, just swiping
20:10
at each other with big heavy weapons.
20:12
These were trained killers and they were wearing the best
20:16
protection the armours could make for them.
20:20
And if you're going to be agile, you would need to wear something
20:22
light. Yeah, so they were expected to
20:27
be able to turn a cartwheel in their armour without their
20:29
helmet on, and they're also expected to be able to vault
20:33
into the saddle without using the stirrups.
20:36
So the the idea. That must be tricky.
20:38
Yeah, the idea of Knights being craned into the saddle is
20:41
something that comes from a Victorian comic opera.
20:44
And it's also a sort of folk memory of armour as being very
20:48
heavy at the at the end of its production, because by then
20:50
firearms were getting so effective.
20:52
In the 17th century, armour did have to get very, very thick.
20:56
And they'd gone back to iron by then.
20:58
And they were actually using it because it was softer than
21:02
steel. And so the the steel plates
21:06
would the iron plates rather would soak up the kinetic energy
21:08
of the projectiles, almost like having a crumple zone built into
21:12
a car. So it was it was better to have
21:15
your armor distort and let a musket ball flatten out on it,
21:20
then be rigid and let the musket ball punch straight through it.
21:26
What breaks my brain though is when you told me previously that
21:32
there was no shining armor. Knights in shining armor is a
21:36
myth. Yeah, almost none so so little
21:40
as to be vanishingly small as as an amount.
21:44
And so this comes back to the heat treatment thing Segways
21:47
nicely from the heat treatment thing when they made armour in
21:52
the forge. Obviously you you shape the
21:55
thing and it leaves you with fire scale on it.
21:59
Think, think of wrought iron railings.
22:02
And that would be useful as weather proofing.
22:08
Because now, now we come to the reality of being out in all
22:11
weathers, fighting, marching, riding, having to set up camp.
22:18
And you do this in, in all weathers at all times of the
22:21
year. And if you have a nice bright
22:23
shiny armour, what do you think is going to happen to it?
22:27
It's going to rot. And we have a document from the
22:33
17th century, a guy called Gervais Markham who was a
22:35
professional soldier, and he helpfully lists the finishes on
22:38
armour for us. I'll just quote him briefly.
22:42
And he describes one colour which is russet, another one
22:47
which is sanguine, another one which is black, and finally
22:51
white or milled armour, in other words, armour which has been
22:54
polished or the surface milled off it.
22:56
And he actually says all this armour is to be rather of russet
23:01
sanguine or black colour than white or milled for it will keep
23:05
the longer from the rust. So there you've immediately got
23:10
a period document telling us a big reason why they would do
23:14
this, because this was weatherproofing so it didn't
23:18
just rust to hell. The other reason though is as we
23:21
move on to steel, as I explained, you heat treat the
23:24
armour to improve the quality of the, of the metal, the defensive
23:28
properties. And if you do that, you've got
23:34
to heat the armour up first and then cool it down quickly.
23:39
So you heat it and you quench it and the colour that Markham
23:43
describes as russet. And there are lots of documents
23:46
that talk about the russeting of armour.
23:48
It's it's the reddening it comes in the French word russet, rous
23:53
red. So it from the Latin, so he's
23:57
describing heating the armour up to a red colour and then the
24:01
Italians would just wait, sell a quick, sell a quick Hail Mary
24:05
and then plunge it into a bath of oil.
24:07
And what that did was it, it was called slack quenching.
24:11
So it was a form of hardening, but not too much in all one go.
24:15
They didn't then have to to retemperate afterwards and it
24:18
left the armour with this grey colour.
24:21
So one process does two things. One, it it hardens it, but not
24:27
too much. And two, it gives it a
24:29
protective coating against, you know, rain, humidity, that sort
24:33
of thing. And that's what most Dharma was
24:36
Co. Yeah, but I I guess so then
24:39
where does this whole knighting shiny armour thing come from?
24:43
Right. Well, it comes from collecting
24:50
largely by the time armour was going out of you.
24:54
So ironically there are more examples of Weiss armour because
24:58
what I did in in the book about the colour finishes on armour, I
25:02
started with what we know because there are far more
25:04
pieces of elite 16th and 17th century armour that survive in
25:08
collections and also lots more documents because the further
25:12
back you go in time, it's a tiny proportion of what was
25:16
originally made. Largely because a lot of early
25:18
armour was cannibalised by armourers.
25:21
They would flatten it, cut it up and then forge it into something
25:24
new because the material was extremely expensive to make.
25:29
So we have these polished pieces and then later on as these
25:35
pieces pass into museums and particularly in private
25:38
collections in big stately homes in the UK, it was all the rage
25:43
to have a nice display of polished armour on the wall.
25:48
So armours that had got as far as the 17th century with their
25:52
original colour finishes intact. And in in one particular case,
25:57
pieces in an Italian museum made it right up into the early 20th
26:01
century with their original colour finishes still intact.
26:04
And then an English antiquarian went along and said, Oh yeah,
26:07
let's clean those up. And they removed, they boiled
26:11
them in oil to get rid of what was left.
26:14
And then that, that wrecked the colour finishes.
26:16
And when they moved into a restoration workshop in Florence
26:19
in the 1970s, they finished the job off.
26:22
And those armours, which are wonderful, are in a museum now
26:26
in north Italy, and they're all white.
26:28
And this sort of thing went on across the board.
26:31
So originally it was the taste of antiquarians.
26:34
It even started in the 18th century with big collections
26:37
like the Imperial Armoury in Vienna.
26:39
We know the Empress Maria Teresa issued an edict that the arm,
26:43
the armours, armours in the armoury should get cleaned up,
26:47
you know, So they went in and started polishing them up.
26:51
So and, and then what happens is this gets embedded in Hollywood,
26:56
It gets embedded in romances like Sir Walter Scott.
27:01
Others people then begin just romanticizing it that these were
27:05
Knights in shining armour. They must have and and the
27:11
Victorian English painters start producing paintings of Knights
27:15
in shining armour as well. And then, then you get TV and
27:19
Hollywood and it just gets hammered home again and again
27:23
and again. But I mean, if we're honest with
27:27
ourselves, shiny armour is prettier to look at.
27:32
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I, I freely admit, hand on
27:36
heart, I thought that was the case when I started making the
27:39
stuff, you know, because I, this is not some grand conspiracy
27:44
theory, you know, there, there hasn't been some
27:46
intergenerational plan to hide the fact that most armour was
27:50
never polished, that that's not the case.
27:52
It's simply just fallen out this way that people have
27:57
romanticised the idea of the night in shining armour and it
28:01
it never was the case. Now what I did to start
28:05
unpicking this whole puzzle was when I was working on armour, I
28:09
began looking at Italian art as a form of reference because
28:13
paintings, engravings, drawings, they can be extremely useful
28:18
because artists would often show religious scenes, for example,
28:22
set in the present day. So they have Roman soldiers
28:25
around the, the crucifixion are dressed like contemporary 14th,
28:31
15th and 16th century soldiers. So it's, they're, they're great
28:34
documents for us to, to look at armour.
28:37
And I was looking at these paintings and in, in time I fell
28:42
in love with the paintings for their own sake.
28:43
And that's what I work on now is art history.
28:46
And you see the armours in these paintings are coloured.
28:52
And a lot of people have simply interpreted this in two ways.
28:55
They say, well, either that's how the artist meant to depict
28:58
polished steel. You know, if it's blue, that's
29:00
the sky reflected in the in the surface of the metal.
29:03
Or they say, oh, well, the painting's discoloured.
29:07
You know, that that armour that's very dark.
29:09
In that painting, the pigments must have changed colour.
29:12
So it was originally much brighter, and now it's darker.
29:16
Now what I did was I put my work on Italian art and European art
29:23
together with what I began to find on the armours themselves
29:27
when I worked on the original thing.
29:28
And when I was taking original armours apart, I began to find
29:33
traces of colour absolutely everywhere.
29:36
Because if if you take two plates apart that have been held
29:39
together with rivets for centuries, no one's had a chance
29:43
to clean between them. So you get armours which are in
29:47
a stately home or a museum now and they're polished white.
29:50
But if you get a chance to take them apart, even if you remove a
29:54
rivet and you can see underneath where the rivet was, you see a
29:57
little Halo of the original surface finish.
30:00
And again you, you find colours everywhere.
30:03
And these colours are this grey colour everywhere, pale blue,
30:08
the beautiful sky blue colour, dark blue and the the real
30:12
classic which is called Peacock blue or sanguine and that's
30:17
purple. It's a bright, livid purple
30:19
colour. So I was finding those colours
30:23
which matched perfectly with the paintings.
30:25
So what I then did was I began to look at period documents and
30:30
you get the descriptions of these colours.
30:33
You get descriptions of azura, which means pale blue or black
30:38
or sanguine or Bundi pavone, Peacock blue or bronze.
30:43
And they're actually describing the colours that I was finding
30:47
on the original armour and that you see in paintings and in the
30:50
inventories. The vast majority of pieces
30:54
listed are all coloured white pieces.
30:58
How do they create those colours?
31:01
Well, I explained russeting is by heating up and slack
31:05
quenching if you use slightly different temperatures, if you
31:11
go higher in the colour range and these are temper colours.
31:15
Tempering is you heat a, a piece of steel up fully read and
31:20
quench it. And that's what's called glass
31:22
hard. It's very hard, but it's
31:24
brittle. And I, I tested that once I got
31:26
a piece of carbon steel, quenched it to make it glass
31:29
hard and then smacked it on the anvil and it's shattered like a
31:32
piece of glass. So what you need to do is temper
31:37
the steel and tempering means you clean off the surface so you
31:42
can see it. It's white at this stage and
31:44
then you begin to heat it up again and it goes through a
31:47
series of colours from yellow to brown to purple to dark blue to
31:53
light blue and then it goes grey.
31:55
And then you go into the the red range and you then re quench
32:02
when you reach the desired colour.
32:04
So for example, something like a scalpel blade or a what what the
32:09
Americans would call a box cutter blade or a Stanley life
32:13
in the UK, it's very brittle because it's been heated up to
32:18
what we call a yellow or straw temper and then it's been re
32:23
quenched. And hence the thing I mentioned
32:25
before. This is why we get the
32:27
expression losing your temper because you break when you lose
32:31
your temper. And so if a thing isn't well
32:33
tempered, the metal could go. Oh, I'm following.
32:38
If you want to, if you want to, if you want to stay on that
32:40
colour, you quench it. It freezes it and that's why
32:48
this heat treatment could produce pale blue armour at
32:51
Zorro and dark blue armour. And if you wanted armour to be
32:57
black, that was another step. Afterwards you could slack
33:01
quench a piece of armour, coat it in oil and then or even fully
33:05
harden it and then you burn the oil off, you heat it up in the
33:08
forge and it you burn the oil off and it blackens it.
33:12
And that that's a a known technique used by also by
33:15
blacksmiths. That's fascinating, Chris.
33:18
So what you're saying is the colour of the armour wasn't only
33:23
for aesthetics, but it also indicated the strength?
33:26
Yeah. Oh, it's like a what people used
33:29
to call a kite mark, you know, a certification of quality.
33:34
Because when most armour was russet grey, a family in
33:40
Augsburg called the Helmschmitz began to fully harden and temper
33:44
armour and they left the temper colour on to demonstrate it was
33:48
a superior quality. And this was the Peacock blue.
33:51
And what they would do is they would heat, I know because I've
33:54
done this, they would heat the armour up to red and then quench
33:58
it. So it's then very hard, but it's
34:00
brittle. And what you then do is you
34:05
clean off the surface and you heat it up to, to go through
34:08
the, the purple range. So it just as it's going from
34:13
purple to blue, that's when you then quench it in water and you,
34:19
you've really got to arrest it firmly.
34:21
So it's, it's cold water now at that point you've got a great
34:26
finish. It's this livid colour, quite
34:28
blue in the water. But the problem is the last
34:30
thing you want is moisture on the surface because if you leave
34:34
it there, although you've given it a colour oxide finish, it
34:39
will start to corrode because there is water there.
34:42
So you then transfer it to a bath of boiling water.
34:46
So you're bringing the temperature up slowly and then
34:49
you transfer it to a bath of boiling oil.
34:53
So not for the faint hearted these processes.
34:56
And what the oil does is it drives off any remaining
34:59
moisture. And it was and it, it just
35:01
saturates the whole thing and that's it, that's the end of the
35:03
process. You then take it out and you let
35:05
it cool and you have this absolutely livid purple coloured
35:09
armour. And that would be the mark of
35:12
quality, because that's why the Helmschmitz knew somebody
35:15
wearing one of their armours, which would be a hell of a
35:18
striking thing to see when most armour was grey.
35:21
You've got somebody wandering around in this absolutely livid
35:24
purple armour, and it's not just beautiful to see, and it could
35:28
be combined with etch decoration and gilding as well.
35:31
But also, you would simply know by looking at it that that's a
35:35
superior quality product. But there's also a psychology.
35:41
I mean, if, if, if an army was stampeding towards you and
35:46
they're all in the sort of dark, murky grey armor, that would
35:53
certainly be a lot more threatening than if they were
35:56
all wearing a camp pink armor. True, true.
36:03
In fact, in fact, if they were, if they were, if they were
36:05
coming at you in a camp, pink armour, you know, you know it's
36:09
a party and, and, and and they're most likely coming to
36:15
redecorate the castle. Yes, yes, they're gonna check.
36:20
Come come on. Some nice soft furnishings.
36:23
Yeah, in, in, in fact, there's there's there's ATV show I love
36:28
about what what's called the Home Guard here in the UK, which
36:31
were the the veteran soldiers they used as a sort of reserve
36:34
force during World War 2. And it it's a brilliant BBC
36:37
sitcom. And one of the expressions the
36:40
commanding officer uses is Nancy boys.
36:42
And he just, he runs perfectly, these peen karmas, a bunch of
36:50
fancy boys. But I can but I can imagine if
36:54
if if the if the armor was perhaps a Peacock blue or or or
36:59
some sort of sky blue that would look more elite.
37:04
Yeah, there's a I'll, I'll, I'll quote a little document.
37:08
There was when you look at period.
37:13
White, even white, even white would look elite.
37:16
Yeah, White would also look very.
37:17
Prestigious there come there comes a point where we have to
37:19
look at why there was some white armour because there was
37:22
undoubtedly very small amounts early on.
37:26
And then it does seem to come in as a a more general fashion as
37:29
armour is going out of use. But there was a mercenary
37:32
company led by an Englishman called Sir John Hawkwood
37:35
fighting for Florence in the 14th century, and he was
37:41
commander of a company called the White Company.
37:43
And it was assumed for many years that this was because the
37:47
English men at arms were wearing white armour.
37:51
And in fact, no, because the the actual description of them from
37:55
the time by a fellow called Vilani, he says that every one
38:03
of them had one or two pages or even more as befitted their
38:06
status. And when they'd removed their
38:08
arms and the the said pages were immediately ready to keep them
38:11
clean so that when they joined in battle, their arms seemed
38:14
like mirrors. And for this reason they were
38:16
more intimidating. So that is an example of highly
38:20
reflective armour, yes, being more intimidating.
38:23
But what Vilani doesn't say is they polished it.
38:26
He says they kept it clean. And what we see in Italian
38:30
paintings in this period is this pale blue colour and it is very
38:35
shiny because it's it's, it's similar to the Peacock blue.
38:40
You don't wind up with this thick grey oxide on it.
38:43
The oxide looks more like a a coloured lacquer.
38:46
So the light goes through the oxide, bounces off the polished
38:50
surface of the steel or iron underneath, and comes back out
38:53
again. And then what the eye sees is
38:56
the interference pattern created by the oxide layer, which in
38:59
this case is pale blue. So yeah, they would have looked
39:02
incredible in a in a period where most people had this
39:05
russet grey, they would have looked very different.
39:12
If the armor were shiny wouldn't that have been strategically
39:17
better though? I mean it would be off putting
39:19
to your enemy. Makes you an excellent target as
39:23
well. Yes, of course, you're right,
39:27
because the light's bouncing off you and then you can be be seen.
39:30
Yes, I I suppose. Well, there's there's something,
39:33
I mean, where we have records of white armour, there is a
39:37
specific reason for it being worn and we see it used in in
39:44
combination of Saints in paintings.
39:47
It seems to be a thing of purity, something called the
39:51
I'll get it right, the the Knights of Christ.
39:55
There's a for example, a painting by Jan and Hubert van
39:57
Ike called the Ghent Altarpiece and it shows Saint George some
40:02
other Saints and they are militis Christie.
40:05
They are the Knights of Christ. And they do have this absolutely
40:09
white polished armour also. Yep.
40:13
Also now interesting thing is sometimes you can spot white
40:18
armour or other. Differences in the colour of
40:21
armour in paintings because one of the giveaways in a painting
40:24
is you can get soldiers wearing different or armour with
40:27
different colour finishes, you know, grey and black or pale
40:31
blue and grey. And this is one of the things
40:34
which defeats the argument that no, no, no, it was originally
40:37
white. The paintings just discoloured.
40:39
Well, if the painting had discoloured, all of the armour
40:42
would have discoloured the same way.
40:44
So that's one thing that tells us that you have different
40:46
colour finishes. But there was a document which
40:53
could, it's an Iberian document, Spanish peninsula.
40:57
It could go back as far as the 14th century.
40:59
It certainly goes back to the 15th century and it's called
41:03
Amadis of Gaola. And it's a very interesting, you
41:08
know, snapshot and I'm going to have to there we go.
41:10
Found the document of why they wore white armour because in
41:16
this document it states specifically this is Amadis
41:20
speaking. And I considered it a boon.
41:23
And I told him I would take the horse because it was very good
41:25
and the Keras and the helmet, but that the other arms were to
41:29
be white as he's befitting for a novice knight, right?
41:34
These are not battle hardened warriors.
41:36
This is like a Sandhurst uniform before you go into action in
41:41
your proper battle fatigues. And he then repeats it, he said.
41:45
Then at this hour there arrived Gundolin and Isando, Squire of
41:50
Dombranco, both wearing white armour, has befitted novice
41:54
Knights. So he's stating specifically
41:57
that white armour is used for Squires and novices, not for
42:02
experienced worries. We also then get a wonderful
42:06
painting that what's called the double portrait of Federico de
42:09
Montefeltaro and his son Guida Baldo in 1474.
42:12
And he is shown completely in white armour.
42:15
And he at the time was setting himself up as as sort of almost
42:20
like a paladin, a leader of the Christian faith.
42:23
And there was talk of a a crusade again to free
42:27
Constantinople from the the Turks.
42:30
And he said he wrote a letter to Lorenzo the Medici in which he
42:35
said he wanted to be purer than than the candle of the Virgin
42:39
Mary. And so there he is in the skin
42:41
of this pure white armour, sitting in his library, reading
42:45
his books and wearing the Order of the Garter round his around
42:49
below his knee. And the truth of the man is he
42:53
was up to his neck in the plot to assassinate the Medici in
42:56
1478. He was working for the Pope and
43:00
they were going to butcher the whole family.
43:02
And then he was meant to bring his mercenaries in once that had
43:04
been done through the gates and take over the city of Florence
43:08
completely in a violent coup. So yes, the painting is a
43:11
wonderful example of of purity and righteousness.
43:15
And it's an example of absolute hypocrisy as well.
43:19
The man was what James Derlingpole would call a Roman.
43:25
But you know, I mean, armour has been part of human history,
43:29
what, for thousands of years? Oh yeah, How much has it
43:32
changed? Not a huge, well, yeah, the
43:41
shapes of it have changed. I mean it's technology which has
43:44
largely driven that change because you have to be able to
43:47
make a large plates of iron or steel in the 1st place which you
43:50
can shape and then put them together in an armour.
43:54
If you can't do that, you have to use very small pieces of
43:57
metal linked together and that's what male is, what people will
44:01
think of as chainmail. That's a form of armour that
44:04
developed because you can make a male shirt from lots of tiny
44:08
pieces of iron or steel. Then as time went on, they could
44:12
produce larger and larger pieces in the 14th century and you get
44:16
what are called coats of plates. So these are leather or textile
44:19
garments lined with iron or steel plates.
44:23
So these are like flak jackets, but they're covered with very
44:25
rich fabrics. They're very colourful.
44:28
Then they can produce with, with improvements in blast furnace
44:32
technology, they can make bigger and bigger pieces until
44:35
eventually you can forge a helmet out of one piece of iron
44:39
or steel and the same for a breastplate and the same for a
44:42
back plate. And so that is what has created
44:46
a lot of change in the shape. You then get fashion as well.
44:50
You know, they were in the same way that an Elizabethan doublet
44:53
in the late 16th century is what's called a piece cod.
44:55
It's this big belly that that dips right down towards the
44:59
codpiece. Breastplates copied that shape
45:02
and the the piece of armour worn over the thighs called a tacit.
45:07
And where the Elizabethans had what they called trunk hose,
45:09
these sort of puffed out again, we're we're we're straying
45:13
towards Nancy boy territory, but they have these very elaborate
45:17
trunk hose and the Tacits were flared out to to fit over the
45:20
top of them so. And they were.
45:24
And yes, yes, armours made in Greenwich were pink.
45:27
So there, there you go. Perfect.
45:35
This is so not not not only are we destroying the idea of the
45:39
Knights in shining armour, we're saying the Knights there were
45:41
were Nancy boys. This is really going to
45:42
disappoint those damsels in distress you.
45:50
Can't say in Nancy boys though. It's Nancy them.
45:55
I don't. I don't know where that would
45:56
fit on the the gender spectrum. Was armour only designated?
46:05
Is designated the right word delegated to those in the
46:08
military? Or was it ever used just for
46:12
fashion purposes? Yeah, it both.
46:17
You had in the military sense, you had every type of armour.
46:20
You can compare it to cars. You had everything from a
46:24
clapped out second hand Fiat that was falling to pieces, Fiat
46:28
Panda which would be the real cheap and nasty munition armour
46:31
and also some armour as it went out of fashion.
46:34
If it wasn't broken up and reforged to to make more
46:37
fashionable stuff it would go down the social scale.
46:40
So you would find quite poor soldiers wearing what had once
46:43
been quite fashionable pieces. But then you go up the scale to
46:48
a nice BMW, to a nice Ferrari and Aston Martin.
46:52
You you've got very high quality armour for the people that could
46:55
afford it, so made by famous makers for famous clients.
47:02
But also you had armour worn in a civilian context as
47:05
decoration. The armour for the throat is
47:07
called gorgette and there are examples of people wearing
47:10
gilded gorgettes or even a collar of silvered male because
47:14
they would gold plate armour and silver plate armour and these
47:17
would be worn as very elaborate forms of costume if you like.
47:23
But also civilian clothing was armoured inside.
47:27
We know that Lorenzo de Medici for example had a doublet the
47:32
the description in the infantry specific lined with fine
47:35
Milanese lames. In other words, it was meant to
47:38
look like civilian clothing. So if somebody stabbed him, it,
47:42
it would just be stopped by the armour.
47:44
In fact, when the Patsy conspiracy took place in 1478
47:48
and his brother Giuliano was killed, the member of the Patsy
47:52
family that came to take him from the Medici Palace down to
47:55
the cathedral where the murder took place.
47:58
He, he joked, he said you'd been, he'd been ill.
48:00
And he said you're putting on weight, you're getting fat.
48:02
And he gave him a hug. He squeezed him.
48:05
He was checking he wasn't wearing armour underneath his
48:08
clothing. So and also they they used to
48:12
line hats with steel. Here's here's another expression
48:15
for you. It's a secret.
48:16
Keep it under your hat because they used to wear steel skull
48:20
caps underneath hats as well. That's really interesting.
48:26
That must have been very uncomfortable.
48:28
Well, sometimes, yeah, you get a lot of it in, certainly in the
48:32
military context. In the civilian context, there's
48:35
another piece in the Medici infantry, which is a Beretta
48:39
lined with steel plates. So it's the sort of hats that
48:42
you see in the paintings of Botticelli or Gil and I are the
48:46
famous members of the Medici family, and they appear to be
48:49
wearing civilian hats and civilian clothes.
48:51
But that could be armour for all you know.
48:53
That was the whole point. So in those days they would have
48:59
used steel condoms. Oh, you mean a, you mean a
49:03
codpiece, a thing called a briette?
49:07
Yes, yes. Listeners, if they get a chance
49:11
to go to the Tower of London, you ask me these questions.
49:14
You've got to be ready for the answers.
49:17
If you go and see what's called the Great Harry Armour, which
49:20
was made for Henry, King Henry the Eighth, in 1540 in the Tower
49:23
of London, it's got a what? He definitely needed one.
49:29
It's it's a whopper, I can tell you.
49:36
He's he's poor wives. Yes.
49:42
So, but I mean, armour is making a a great comeback now.
49:45
I mean, it's it's called robots. Yes, yes, up.
49:51
Up to a point, modern soldiers were they had what they would
49:55
regard as sacrificial limbs. They began going back to the
49:59
idea of helmets and body armour. And over Kevlar flat vests,
50:04
there would be these huge heavy ceramic plates to stop the sort
50:06
of high velocity round that you could fire.
50:10
But as you say, now they're now that soldiers are becoming
50:13
redundant. Yeah, I'm, I'm sure that robots,
50:16
well robots and drones are being equipped with armour.
50:20
Look at the the the drone netting that's being deployed.
50:24
That's just these are physical barriers to stop by the missiles
50:29
or, you know, the drones themselves.
50:32
Chris, I just want to circle back to something you said
50:34
earlier because I want to make sure that I don't sound stupid,
50:38
but you, you took issue with the term blacksmith.
50:43
So the people who made armour in medieval times, what were they
50:47
called? They were called armourers the
50:50
the Italian not. Blacksmiths.
50:52
Nope, the Italian word is Croat sale, a caress maker, but it
50:58
applied to all types of armors in French.
51:02
Should an armor be a blacksmith? And could a blacksmith be an
51:06
armor? Nope, Nope.
51:08
The guilds were very strict. Entirely different.
51:10
Yeah, entirely different. They might both use a forge and
51:13
hammers, but the rest of the the tooling they had would be very
51:16
different and the guilds would just stamp down on it.
51:19
If they tried to do that, you know they'd find their workshops
51:22
closed down and they'd be fined and thrown out the Guild.
51:28
And would they have had status among armors?
51:32
Like for example, would people want to have gone to a
51:36
particular armor because he had a great name?
51:39
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:42
To be a print people used to people would serve
51:46
apprenticeships which could they would start at about 7 years.
51:50
That shows you how long they had to study to actually be
51:53
proficient in what they did. Sometimes apprenticeships could
51:58
be as long as 15 years and you would not be paid the families
52:04
which would be absolutely chuffed to pieces that their kid
52:07
would be apprentice to a famous maker because they're
52:11
afterwards, they know they'd have a job for life.
52:14
So yeah, it was quite a a status thing.
52:17
And were blacksmiths and armourers rivals at all or just
52:24
basically like comparing a a plumber to an electrician?
52:29
Not not, not so much, but it the relationship was more that the
52:34
armour has kept an eye on what the blacksmiths would have been
52:36
making. If anyone was going to start
52:38
abusing the ability to, you know, use their forge to produce
52:41
something, it would have been the blacksmiths.
52:43
And I'm any blacksmiths listening to this podcast and
52:46
now going to be gritting their teeth.
52:49
It's it's simply the way they thought at the time that
52:53
everyone trained to carry out a certain craft and then they were
52:57
meant to stay in their lane afterwards.
52:59
And generally speaking, the guilds made sure their members
53:04
earned a decent living. I think what I'm trying to get
53:08
at is could a blacksmith be an armourer and vice versa?
53:14
I mean like, was one APHD and the other just a straightforward
53:17
bachelor's? Again again, you're tempting me
53:20
to seriously rile any blacksmiths listening to this
53:23
podcast. Being being a now retired master
53:28
armourer myself, I'm going to have a very biased view of that.
53:32
But blacksmiths have different skills.
53:35
Blacksmiths forge Weld, which is not a thing that armourers would
53:39
generally do. Blacksmiths could produce much
53:44
larger works about than armors. So I'm just going to just
53:49
sidestep that question and say they're two different skill
53:52
sets. How about that?
53:55
I have made a grand total of 1 knife and it took me a whole
54:00
weekend and it was a huge amount of work.
54:02
I can only imagine the amount of work that it takes to to create
54:08
armor. Is it just too exhausting?
54:11
Well, you could, yeah, there's, there is, there is the.
54:16
I'm 63 now and when I started, I was 23.
54:19
And inevitably that takes the time 63.
54:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't look a day over 70.
54:25
Thank you. That's you're always so kind
54:30
when I come on your podcast. It, it wasn't right when I
54:38
started making this stuff, it was for the love of the
54:42
material. And it, it's, it's true, it's
54:46
fascinating stuff. And you know, you'll have heard
54:48
me talking about it now, you know, what a, what a incredibly
54:51
deep subject it is. But the principal mistake I made
54:57
in my career was to go into restoration work.
55:00
And while that was good for private clients and for museums
55:04
and the work I did for museums, you know, I, I worked on some
55:07
absolutely staggering pieces, it also brought me into contact
55:11
with the antiques trade. And whilst that can pay very
55:15
well, the problem with that is a bag of rusty plates that were
55:22
once an armour are worth, to be blunt, bugger all.
55:27
If you can put those plates back together, you, you clean them
55:30
up, you replace any missing plates, you give them a lovely
55:33
surface finish and then you mount that armour on a mannequin
55:37
and it looks Absolutely Fabulous.
55:39
It's worth a lot of money, sometimes a very, very great
55:44
deal of money. And that means the incentive on
55:47
the part of the dealers is to not say the pieces have been
55:50
restored. And that on the one hand, when I
55:56
first began doing work like that, there is a sense of pride
55:59
because you think, wow, look at, you know, because you, you are
56:04
being challenged by the people that made the stuff originally.
56:07
Your work has to be as good as the original always, or it's
56:11
going to look terrible. So you learn even you even learn
56:14
to work in the styles of lots of different armours and in
56:17
different periods in different materials.
56:21
So there's a great sense of pride in it.
56:22
But equally, you know, there's no getting away from it.
56:26
Someone somewhere at the end of the line who could be buying
56:30
that, not knowing it's been restored at all.
56:34
And he's thinking, wow, look at this, fantastic.
56:36
They're getting screwed. And so this, this did begin to
56:40
take the, the, the shine off it. And it also, unfortunately, in
56:44
that world, you meet some extremely unpleasant people
56:47
because of the amounts of money involved.
56:50
And it was when I decided to step back from certain clients
56:55
who I was being very well paid by, but treated like a, a slave,
56:59
that really kicked off some nasty reactions.
57:04
And because these these people wanted me back in the field.
57:08
And it, it's a thing which causes me problems to this day.
57:14
But what happened Was it it? And this is this is going to
57:19
lead onto a much bigger subject. But bear with me.
57:21
This did me a huge favour because these were some of my
57:26
first faltering steps down the rabbit hole because I began to
57:29
see how the world actually works and specifically with regard to
57:34
what Freemasonry is about and the power they can wield.
57:39
And that really was a massive wake up call for me.
57:44
So actually because the, the, I'd moved to Italy by this stage
57:48
and because the scales were falling from my eyes, the people
57:51
who were trying to make my life absolute hell to force me back,
57:56
you know, just just block any other work I was doing to force
57:59
me back into their service. They're not going to like what
58:02
I'm going to say now. They did me a massive favour on
58:06
2 fronts. 1, they drove me away from what's pretty toxic.
58:13
You know, if you want to live your life and be honest and just
58:19
be around normal people instead of people who are trying to
58:23
setting out to con people the whole time, it's it's a much
58:27
healthier thing. But the thing which is really
58:29
going to make them grind their teeth is this falling down the
58:32
rabbit hole led me to avoid the vaccines.
58:36
So thanks guys. You did me a huge favour.
58:41
What's the Masonic link? Lot of Masons in the antiques
58:45
trade lot. Lot of dealers are Masons and
58:52
just in case. Just is that?
58:53
Is that just coincidence? No money and power.
58:58
They will go where the money and power is.
59:01
And the people I've had the most trouble with actually control
59:05
the antique arms and all. My market, it's after a certain
59:09
level, it's pretty much run as a ring.
59:11
So the idea that that it's all free competition and you know
59:16
you can, you can buy stuff from one deal if it's in competition
59:18
against another. No, a lot of them work together
59:23
and they've even gone so far as to colonize.
59:26
It works online. That's how they've come after
59:29
me. But if you go into things like
59:31
arms and armour chat rooms, Facebook groups, what a lot of
59:35
the people in those groups don't realise is members of those
59:38
groups are agents placed there by people in the antiques trade
59:43
as runners. They're on the lookout for
59:44
people who turn up original bits of armour.
59:47
So even in chat groups you have people working away quietly and
59:52
the people in those groups don't realise they've they've been
59:55
infiltrated by the market. They're also doing their best to
59:59
infiltrate museums as well. Yeah.
1:00:01
I mean, what you're saying, yeah, what you're saying is like
1:00:03
a a snapshot of just about everything else.
1:00:06
Yeah. It's, it's the what I've seen,
1:00:10
what I've experienced, unfortunately first hand in the,
1:00:13
the arms and armour world is a microcosm of what's going on out
1:00:16
there in the world. It's the same thing.
1:00:19
And yes, I, I got now I'm, I'm politically speaking on, on the,
1:00:24
what you might call it the, the dissident spectrum.
1:00:27
I'm a nobody. I'm not giving any governments
1:00:31
any grief. I'm not making anti vaccine
1:00:36
podcasts, I'm not doing any of that.
1:00:38
But what I did was say no to some people who are connected to
1:00:42
some extremely wealthy collectors.
1:00:45
And that meant I was saying no to the collectors as well.
1:00:50
And the The upshot of that was you could call me the Mike
1:00:54
Yeadon of the arms and armour world because I got cancelled
1:00:57
the same way he did. And that means being derived by
1:01:00
Google. It means all sorts of fun and
1:01:03
games with having my, the, the servers with my websites
1:01:08
attacked my, my Webmail compromised.
1:01:12
I've had the lot. And so when, when I've seen all
1:01:16
the sorts of guests in alternative media cropping up on
1:01:18
podcasts like yours, like James Delingpole stories on UK column,
1:01:23
I began thinking, this is all horribly familiar.
1:01:28
So it's, you know, all I, all I did was I, I came tumbling down
1:01:32
this rabbit hole because of that, you know, So again, to, if
1:01:37
you like to, to, to finalise the, the answer, it's what I
1:01:43
think about that market now is it carries the stench of death
1:01:46
with it. That's how I, I articulated it.
1:01:49
Because there are people that love these things because
1:01:52
they're about war and they're about killing.
1:01:54
They absolutely love possessing something.
1:01:57
A sword, a Japanese sword, for example, would be signed by the
1:02:00
maker on the Tang. It would also be signed by the
1:02:03
tester. So Japanese swords could be
1:02:05
tested on condemned criminals. And we have specified number of
1:02:09
cuts, types of cuts, and those are chiseled into the tangs.
1:02:13
And there are people who get off on owning those weapons.
1:02:15
And I don't want to be part of that world anymore.
1:02:19
But I mean, if you're looking at an armor in a museum, how do you
1:02:23
know that it's the real thing? I do this.
1:02:29
This is the whole point. I know from the shape, I know
1:02:33
from the construction, I know from corrosion patterns, I know
1:02:38
how metal should after a certain stage begin to delaminate
1:02:42
because these were handmade metals and they they actually
1:02:44
come apart in layers. And there are metallography
1:02:50
studies done under the microscope of the the
1:02:52
crystalline structure of what real armour is actually like.
1:02:57
So you can also carry out scientific analysis.
1:02:59
Someone I know in the UK is the the leading guy in the field so
1:03:03
I know everything there is to take apart a fake.
1:03:09
Which also makes me a deep deeply inconvenient to the arms
1:03:13
and armour world. I used to do consultancy work
1:03:16
for an auction house here in Italy.
1:03:18
I'll be no more specific than that.
1:03:20
And I was shown the door when they handed me a helmet and said
1:03:25
catalog that for us, would you? And I just handed it straight
1:03:28
back and said I can't. That was made yesterday.
1:03:30
I'm not Catholic, I'm not putting my name to that.
1:03:32
And that's what they wanted me for.
1:03:35
They wanted me to be say, yeah, this is a genuine helmet, German
1:03:38
mid 16th century, dah dah, dah, dah, dah, fine.
1:03:41
And I just said no, no way. So that was it.
1:03:44
Bye. It's organised crime.
1:03:54
Now you're getting there. Yeah, yeah.
1:03:58
So it's like mafia? They are, yeah, they are a
1:04:01
mafia. That's that is absolutely true.
1:04:03
Yeah, one of one of the the few people I knew back in England.
1:04:10
I mean, I, I have no, no contact.
1:04:11
Whoops. Sorry.
1:04:12
I have no contact with anyone in the field now.
1:04:15
He used to describe the the all the dealers that turned up to
1:04:18
the the fairs he organised as the brethren.
1:04:21
And yeah, that's that's an app name for them.
1:04:24
How can I find out more? Right, well I know we've gone
1:04:30
over time, but what I'd like people to do instead of
1:04:33
remembering me as that that bloke that used to work on
1:04:37
armour until the Freemasons caught up with him, is I now
1:04:41
work on art history and I publish books on art history.
1:04:44
And if you go to my website, that's Chris Dobson, dot IT,
1:04:49
Chris Dobson, all one word, dot IT.
1:04:52
You'll find the books I produce there, you'll find the podcasts
1:04:56
I'm now producing. I've written three books about
1:04:59
the art and history of Florence to date, and there's a new one
1:05:02
coming out, that one about the paintings about the Battle of
1:05:05
San Romano that I mentioned earlier that's coming out around
1:05:09
Easter. So it'd be lovely if people
1:05:11
would hop over to my website and they can find out all about me
1:05:13
there. They can also find my podcasts
1:05:16
on YouTube, Brighton, Bit, Shoot Odyssey, you know the usual
1:05:20
suspects and they can find me on Sub Stack as well.
1:05:23
Chris Dobson, thank you for joining me in the trenches.