Customer Reviews

Arms and Armor: A Pictorial Archive from Nineteenth-Century Sources (Dover Pictorial Archive)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I consider myself fairly picky about the quality of the images I use in my work. These clipart pictures are truly exceptional! Every single image, even the small helmet shots, are of an exceptionally high level of detail. You sometimes feel like the item is right in front of you. At this price, you would not expect the subtle shadings and hatching to be present in the art or print of the book, but they are there, giving the art a sense of depth that I have not found in other publications (even those in full color). This book provides well over 750 high quality clipart images. There are a very few images that are of a far lower detail, and hence, quality level. But that can be excused by the overwhelming achievement of the artist who produced the overall work of this book. For those looking to verbally depict armor or weapons, the value of this book cannot be over stated - it will inspire page after page with its high level of detail and the obvious inspiration of the smiths of history.

The pictures are indeed good quality and there are lots of them. I think it should be made clear, however, that this is only a book of pictures. There are no captions or explanations of any sort. You will surely see something in here that catches your eye, but will have little idea what it was called or where it was from. On many pages there is a country and time period, but most of the time, there are multiple countries listed with no distinction as to which image relates to the respective country. I was also disappointed in the almost complete lack of images of ancient Roman arms and armor. Middle ages to Renaissance is covered quite well, even some of ancient Greece, but Rome (arguably the greatest military force of all history) goes under-represented with only two small pictures from the Roman republic or empire.

The book opens with an exquisitely detailed illustration of a beautiful cuirassier armour and horse bard which I immediately recognized as having been made for Louis XIII of France, now located at the Musee d'Armee. Every articulation and every rivet of the armour is detailed, every shadow on the steel expertly rendered in cross-hatching.

The caption reads: German (17th century.)

This is a good preview of the rest of the book. Incredible illustrations; totally bizarre, inaccurate, sketchy descriptions.

Each page is scattered with illustrations, usually one or two large central depictions of armours or weapons and then several other assorted pieces of armour or weaponry. Then the caption at the bottom will say something like: "French, German and Italian." There is absolutely no indication of WHICH of the illustrations corresponds to which of those descriptions. It doesn't even say "left to right, top to bottom" or whatever.

Here's a sample page: a detail of a gauntlet, a round shield, a man in Gothic-style plate armour, a group of Medieval archers, two swords, and a Maximilian-style bellows visored close helmet. At the bottom: French, German and Spanish (15th century.)

Uh...which is which? No explanation at all. Also, many times there will be items on the page which are not remotely within the stated time period - as in this example.

Page 32 shows some sort of brigandine or "jack of plate," next to a munitions-grade cuirassier's harness probably from some time during the Thirty Years War (1600s.) The caption claims that all the items on that page are from the 14th and 15th centuries. No. No way in hell.

It would have been great if someone with the most cursory knowledge of a chronological timeline of arms and armour had been involved in the creation of this book. I would really like to be able to know more about all of the interesting pieces shown. But there is no text accompanying the drawings, other than the wildly-inaccurate dates and countries of origin at the bottom of each page.

However, the illustrations are all top-notch. They're all done in the same cross-hatched style, all extremely detailed. It is similar to the look of late 19th century engravings and newspaper illustrations, like the cartoons by Thomas Nast. That same kind of intricate line style. Very nice to look at.

If you're an artist trying to draw historical battle scenes, this would be an absolutely invaluable resource, since one could easily learn to draw basic sketches of armour and weapons by first copying the drawings in this book, and then experimenting with modifying them.

Overall I would recommend this book. I just need to point out how totally lacking in context all of the illustrations are. But it's really not that much of a problem. If you're just buying this book to look at the drawings, don't let that deter you. But if you want to actually learn about the armour and weapons, buy books like the Osprey series (Men at Arms) and read the articles on myarmoury.com.

I bought this book expecting a lot of good pictures and diagrams. I did get that; however, I didn't get anything else. The saving grace of the book is that the pictures are in fact excellent, and, it does say right on the front cover that the pictures are from ninteenth-century sources. The 1800s' aren't exactly known for their high quality of historical accuracy, and it's only in the most contemporary armour, approximately late 1400's through 1600's, that the illustrations are most reliable. Before that point, it can be downright abysmal, as oftentimes it portrays armour from the wrong period; for example, suits of obviously 16th-century armour are depicted upon pages captioned "14th Century". I would not rely upon this as an factual source at all, and only use it as a source of clip-art or artistic inspiration. As I said, the pictures are pretty, but that's about it...

I publish newsletters for a non-profit organization that re-creates the Middle Ages to educate people about history - the Society for Creative Anachronism. "Arms & Armor" has been an invaluable resource to handsomely illustrate the pages of my newsletters. Dover's copyright on this book allows the use of 10 images per project - which is very generous, considering some other clip art books only allow 4 or 5 per project. Furthermore, the country and century from which the images were cultivated is listed at the bottom of every page. This is immensely helpful for using these images in education. When one of our members writes an article about 16th century German horse armor, I can find an exact image to match his/her description in the article. There is a wide variety of images to choose from, including sketches of helmets, swords, axes, full suits of armor, shields, battle scenes and armor accoutremonts. I have owned this book for three years, and I use it with almost every newsletter issue I publish. I consider it an essential resource for SCA newsletter illustration.