Close helmet: HEN.M.68-1933

Maker(s)

Production: Unknown (Probably)

Entities

• Close helmet

Categories

• Armour

Description

Close helmet, for use by a cuirassier. Formed of a skull with a visor, an upper bevor and a bevor attached to it by common pivots, and three modern gorget-plates front and rear. The skull is formed in two halves joined by a turn to the left along a low medial comb that rises to a point at its apex where it is pierced with a hole for the attachment of a missing finial. It is decorated at the apex with a circle of almond-shaped lobes, and elsewhere with radiating flutes of V-shaped section. A round-headed rivet and rosette-washer located at each side of the neck of the skull served to secure a strap that fastened around the front of the bevor. Attached by a total of six rivets at the nape is a large, tapering, tubular plume-holder of iron, decorated on its body with diagonal lines and slashes, and at its damaged upper edge with fleurs-de-lis, repeated at the terminals of its integral arms. The pivots that secure the visor, the upper bevor and the bevor to the skull, take the form of large brass rivets with radially-fluted domed heads and circular internal washers. The visor has a stepped, centrally divided vision-slit. Its brow is decorated with flutes, forming a continuation of those of the skull. The lower edge of the visor is angled inwards to nestle within the upper bevor. The upper bevor is cut at the right side of its upper edge with a small rectangular notch to accommodate a lifting-peg. The lower edge of the visor appears only to be punched with a dot at the point where the lifting-peg should be riveted. Each side of the upper bevor is decorated with a total of twenty-one modern, round-headed brass rivets in a quatrefoil formation, possibly occupying what were originally ventilation-holes. Riveted at the right of the chin of the upper bevor is a modern pierced brass staple that formerly received a now incomplete brass swivel-hook riveted at the right of the chin of the bevor. The medially-ridged bevor is strongly shaped to the chin and cut with a broad, U-shaped face-opening. The helmet is fitted with three modern, upward-overlapping gorget-plates front and rear. The lower edge of the third lame in each instance has a plain inward turn. That of the front plate is more markedly convex than that at the rear. The crest of the comb, the face-opening of the skull and bevor, the edges of the vision-slit of the visor and the upper edge of the upper bevor all have file-roped inward turns bordered by single incised lines which, except on the gorget-plates, also border the secondary edges of the helmet. All the brass rivets and fittings of the helmet are modern.

Notes

History note: Mr James Stewart Henderson of 'Abbotsford', Downs Road, St Helen's Park, Hastings, Sussex.

Legal notes

J.S. Henderson Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1933-03-16) by Henderson, James Stewart

Dating

17th Century, Early#
Circa 1620 - 1630

Note

The helmet is bright with a fairly heavy pitting and patination overall. That on the gorget-plates is artificially induced.

Probably Flemish