Recreating a Greek Cavalryman

[John Conyard]

Good to hear from you again.

I used the armour as a test bed to try out different techniques. I am unaware of any finds of dyed leather in this country to after the Norman Conquest, so I’m used to painting leather as a Roman in Britain. Instead I used dyes and ink. The tube is coloured using modern dyes. The purple edging is another dye. And the red yoke is coloured with ink. I had never used ink before, and tried several colours, but could only really get red to give a good finish. But that was the colour I was after. I suspected the yoke wouldn’t turn out well, so is made to be expendable. I reasoned I could always make another.

A few years ago using Pliny as a reference, and the advice of a nice lady I met at an event, I put together a set of mineral pigments. Mixing them up was great fun, and I went through my “artistic phase”. One of my portraits still hangs in my hallway. On leather the “authentic” pigments gave a finish much like modern leather paints, but the latter are more flexible and less likely to crack.

Looking at the 3rd century AD leather fragments from Dura, leather seems to have been “painted” using coloured wax. The wax would help with water proofing.

Today I was wearing my tube and yoke in a torrential rainstorm. The dyed yellow tube darkened and softened. So did I. The yoke held up well. The armour dried after several hours and returned to its normal state. But after a year of relatively constant use, the ink is wearing off some areas, for example under my armpits.

In the future I’m tempted to mix ink with my bees wax and lanolin. On vegetable tanned leather it should help water proof it, and colour it.