Lamellar Shoulder Defenses

The Met’s collection of armor and weapons from Tibet is the most comprehensive and well published in the world. This promised gift of a lamellar shoulder defense, made of iron lamellae joined by leather laces, adds yet another great strength to it. This defense for the neck and shoulders is the most complete example known of one the rarest forms of iron lamellar armor from Tibet. Lamellar armor is characterized by upwardly overlapping rows of small, finger-sized plates (lamellae), in which the individual lamellae, and the rows they create, are joined together by an intricate system of leather lacing, requiring no other internal support fabric or lining for its structure or functionality. It is an extremely old and widespread form of body armor, with archaeological examples of leather, bronze, and later iron lamellar armor found from East Asia to the Middle East, into Western Europe, over a period of more than a thousand years. Literary and iconographic evidence documents the regular use of lamellar armor across the Mongol empire by the thirteenth century. Virtually all surviving examples, from a non-archaeological context, however, come from Tibet, where it seems to have been the predominant form of body armor from about the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century, and remained in intermittent use into the twentieth century.

Complete examples of Tibetan lamellar armor are rare and usually consist of a sleeveless coat with a distinct waist and comprise twelve to fourteen rows of lamellae. A few surviving examples have attached shoulder pieces and, in one instance, complete sleeves. A removable or independent neck and shoulder defense of the kind presented here is extremely rare, with only two or three fragmentary examples being known. However, the type, and how it was worn, is recorded in great detail in Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wenji, an early fifteenth century Chinese painted scroll in The Met (acc. no. 1973.120.3). The scroll depicts several warriors in full lamellar armor equipped with shoulder pieces of this kind. In one particularly relevant scene, a seated commander is shown wearing complete armor, but with the neck and shoulder defense removed and being carried by his attendant. This invaluable pictorial evidence confirms the exact nature and use of this extremely rare form of lamellar armor.

The lamellar armor is designed to cover the base of the neck, shoulders, and upper arms to about the elbows, mainly comprising a neck piece of a single row and two sleeves made up of eleven rows of iron lamellae joined by integral leather lacing. Seen from the outside, the lamellae of the neck piece overlap from right to left; the lamellae of the sleeves overlap from the back towards the front (left sleeve from right to left and right sleeve from left to right). The rows of the sleeves overlap upward and are laced in the typical manner for lamellar armor of this region and period. The individual lamellae measure about 2 ¾ in. by ¾ in. (7 x 1.9 cm) and are pierced with thirteen lacing holes each. The lamellae of the neck row are bent inward slightly to form a gentle curve and the row is fully lined with leather on its interior; there is a short row of ten lamellae loosely laced to the top edge of the center of the neck. The third row from the bottom of each sleeve is shorter by several lamellae on its inner aspect. There several colored textile laces arranged in a small loose bundle on the second row from the top of the right shoulder.