Thomas Del Mar - Arms & Armour

132
283
Armour
VARIOUS OWNERS
283
A RARE EUROPEAN MAIL CAPE OR PISAIN, LATE 15TH
OR EARLY 16TH CENTURY, PROBABLY GERMAN
composed entirely of riveted iron rings of half-round wire,
those at the neck and at the base of the throat smaller in
size than the rest and forming a stiff upstanding collar or
standard, well-shaped to the shoulders, extending
downwards to obtusely-pointed lower edges at the front
and the rear of the waist and formed with a central opening
at the rear (heavily patinated throughout with several small
holes and some fusing of links at the neck)
Provenance:
Baron Armand van Zeulen (1838-96), sold Sotheby’s,
London, 1st April 1980, lot 81.
Mail capes such as this, referred to by modern collectors as
‘bishops’ mantles’, were known at the time of their use as
‘pisains’. The relatively large rings of the present example
indicate a date in the late 15th or early 16th century. Two
similar examples are in the Royal Armouries Museum,
Leeds, Inv. Nos. III. 13 & 14, in one case fitted with a
Nuremberg-inscribed brass ring. Others of an early fashion
were formerly in the collections of Sir Guy Laking and Felix
Joubert. See G. F. Laking, Vol. II, 1920, figs 530-1).
£8000-12000