Handbook of Arms and Armor

The casual visitor to a modern museum is apt to know little of ancient Arms and Armor, and he may not realize that among connoisseurs these objects rank high in the scale of objects d’art – with ceramics, enamels, bronzes, even paintings. For one reason, unless he happens to know the famous collections in a few European capitals, he has probably seen few specimens of armor of good quality. And he does not take into account that the art of the Armorer, like the art of the painter of sculptor, can not be well appreciated from poor examples. The book is a window to the great but extinct art form where in former centuries the work of the armorer was a living art and its technical interest was well understood even by laymen. Today, on the other hand, it is an art well nigh extinct, and there are not many, even among amateurs, who appreciate how subtle and difficult it was. Its processes were varied and knowledge of them was often guarded jealously, as the heritage of artist families or of ancient guilds. Its implements were things apart, with scores of curiously shaped hammers and anvils, and with a formidable battery of eccentric pincers, files, saws, and vises – objects which their owners sometimes elaborately ornamented, incised, and sculptured.