Riverglade Armour
April 2020 – August 2020
Beginning with Raw Leather
This was the first suit of armour I ever made, inspired by the colours of a medieval fiefdom I created in an early short story titled "Riverglade". I began with raw vegetable-tanned leather, which serves as the foundation for all of my projects as it can be easily shaped, tooled, and dyed to create unique armour components. This image shows the leather stamping process, where I add depth to a border of this armour's gorget (neck armour).
Individual Pieces
For this piece of armour, I took great inspiration from themes of medieval fantasy, such as dragon scales. This image shows two pieces of leather stamped to create dragon texturing before being dyed brown.
Testing Assembly
Before the final assembly of each piece, I often make a test-assembly of the raw leather using brads. This image shows such a test-assembly of one spaulder (shoulder armour) prior to colouring and final assembly. Making these spaulders taught me the role a piece of armour's pattern plays in its final shape. Even though each piece of leather begins as a flat cutout, by placing rivet connections at well-determined points along the edges, I was able to shape the leather into the shape of a shoulder.
Individual Armour Components
Like the spaulder, this image shows a test-assembly of one of this project's greaves (lower leg armour). This piece mimics much of the detailing I used for the upper body, with a fairly simple main segment and dragon-scaled secondary segments. Like the spaulder, the greaves are patterned in such a way that the backside mimics the shape of a calf, allowing the armour to easily mold to the wearer.
Dyeing and Colouring
Once each piece is fully detailed, the last step before assembly is the colouring. For this suit of armour, I chose a theme consisting of primarily brown with blue borders and black and silver for all secondary components. Both the brown and blue dyes were applied with a paintbrush, resulting in an initial colour combination seen here. The dye is buffed to remove any excess, then sealed with a top coat that resists dirt and water.
Scales
For this suit of armour, I decided to build a half-scaled shirt, rather than a full breastplate. This image shows a number of the scales that I hand cut, dyed, and sealed for this project. They were all attached to a suede shirt that I machine sewed, resulting in the overlapping scale texture seen at the top of this page. This was my first suit of armour built, a project in which I learned the general process for crafting armour, stumbled several times, and learned from my mistakes while building a final product.