Connections/Reverence

My name is Hermes Knauer. I'm the armorer in the arms and armor department in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My topic is reverence.

I'm going to tell you a story that I got from my father who had Alzheimer's. He would ask me where I was going.

I would say, "Well, I have to go to work." And then he'd look at me and say, "Well, what is it that you do there?" And I told him, "I remove rust."

And he beckoned me closer and he said, "You can do better than that." And it was a very observant, thoughtful comment.

Saying that we remove rust or corrosion or dirt is only part of the process. Underneath all of this

age and dirt and corrosion is still something beautiful.

Sometimes it just takes a little bit of a sparkle of gold, or a little bit of silver, to kind of reveal that once, this was golden.

Reverence: it's a form of awe. The expenditure

of energy to make something like this is tremendous.

And here we are in New York, walking through a gallery, you look up and there is this incredible wonder drawing you in.

Looking at any object that has been so lovingly created speaks to me on a spiritual level, so many generations later. A lot of the names

are not known any more, but the art remains, and it will speak to future generations.

The bird over the top of the skull of this helmet indicates something almost primordial. I don't know what it means but I am drawn to it.

The Japanese sword, a ritual connecting like a chain into

antiquity. They still produce the blade in the same way. It is imbued with the spirit of those who have made it.

I do believe people have affinity for materials, and if you can harness

that, something very special is gonna happen.

I worked on a mail shirt with a very corroded and rusted surface. Looking at it through magnification

you see incredible detail. Every one of those rings has an inscription on it. They're the ninety-nine names

of Allah. I cleaned each ring front and back. While I was doing this my father was dying.

It turned out to be a form of meditation in a very chaotic time where I realized that control was slipping away. It becomes a very personal journey.

A sword that belonged to the sultan of Turkey, inset with diamonds and emeralds. As I excavated old polish, under the microscope I found the end of a rusted pin, which was part of a hinge.

On the top of the scabbard there was an opening, and what we found was an inscription in the emerald on the inside

and a gold coin from Süleyman the Magnificent. If you spend the time,incredible little secrets reveal themselves to you, and those talk to your heart. Those are the things that

speak to the better angels of our nature.