Customer Reviews

Medieval Costume, Armour and Weapons (Dover Fashion and Costumes)

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

 

 

This book contains an enormous amount of drawings, most from the bible of King Wenceslas and a variety of others. The book covers many items of medieval life from 1350 to 1450, like the title promises and then some. The drawings are not so great, but most are provided with backgound information, dates, who the person was and from which source it may have been taken. This book has been hard to find and I can recommend it to anybody who is interested in recreating the middle ages.

I've seen some of the originals these images are taken from and they are quite well done. As the drawings are from art works they are not as detailed as some costume books so be carefull if using them as references for garment making. A great idea to have a wide range of weapons, clothing and armour in one book.

I purchased this as a resource to be used in the development of artistic imagery. Prior to starting on a drawing, I'll often look at photographs, illustrations, and videos of subject matter in the same vein of interest. This book has a wonderful array of devices, costumes, and weapons, all illustrated simply and competently.

As a historical costumer by trade, I had borrowed this book from a local library so often that buying my own copy just made sense. It covers all classes of dress from peasant to noble in Medieval Europe,focused primarily on the area around Prague. This book has also been used by family as a resource for research papers due to its detailed historical data. Our medieval re-enactment society has used its armor & weapons data to base some of our armor & weapons upon to use in battle re-enactments.
To anyone seeking detailed, documented data regarding Medieval European dress, armor & weapons, I highly recommend this book.

I especially like this book because it's almost the only one that gives information about Bohemian clothing and weapons. I'm a costumer, so the costume section is much more interesting to me than the weapon section, but I think this book gives quite a lot of information about weapons, there is quite a number of paintings and sources they came from. As for the costume section text, it all guides you through the fashion change in the half of the 14th century to the 15th century and gives several examples and proofs. Nevertheless, there are some facts that seem to be a bit confusing, like stating that there were "detachable sleeves" without giving any proofs etc.

Heaps of pictures, particularly good for people interested in 14th and 15th century eastern european stuff.