Real Deal Spolas

[Feinman]

Okay front panel done except for left side metal closure hardware (will be NuGold brass looks just like bronze), and I need to drill the holes at corners of Gorgon's mouth to add the leather thong with the two rings in front at either side to provide tie-downs for yoke.  the row of stitching on right side will be continuous when side scale panel attatched.  Need to make new backplate, will be simpler and faster, as I've learned a LOT from the front.  Sewing together tough rawhide is tortuous, but the results worth it.  Here it is so far:



All of the cord used is 12 ply waxed Irish linen cord.

[Feinman]

Here is a better picture:

[Athena Areias]

That's coming along nicely!

A tip (if you want it): Use a very skinny nail set to punch your sewing holes ahead of stitching. It separates the tissue fibers instead of removing them as in pre-drilling the holes. The fibers close back in and lock down the thread/cord. Don't get too far ahead of yourself or you need to re-open the holes. I just did this for my triple sole Greek boots. A bit of a pain, but the stitching flies!

[Clavdivs]

This is exceptionally fine work. I believe it will exceed the spolas of Mr. Michael Amt (https://www.larp.com/hoplite/greekarmor.html) insofar as it replicates the quadripartite or four-piece construction of the Achilles Painter's original and the Saronic statues. Although I have said it before, the polychrome decoration is beautifully done.

Keep it up! Out of interest, do you possess, or mean to acquire, a complete set of the Achilles vase panoply (the spolas plus the under-shift or chitoniskos, cloak greaves, xiphos and dory [I think the sauroter is visible]?). It would be most interesting to see it.

Incidentally, I have found a portion of an essay by the classicist J.H. Oakley on the Achilles Painter and his school, giving a professional description of your type vase:

''A large belly amphora in the Vatican displays the figure of a warrior labelled Achilles on the front (Vatican 16571; FR, pl. 167,2).1 Dressed in a diaphanous chitoniskos beneath an elaborately decorated cuirass, he stands in a contrapposto position looking off pensively to the right. In his left hand he holds a long spear over his shoulder; his right hand is propped on his hip. A cloak is draped over his left arm, and a sword in scabbard hangs from a baldric that crosses his chest and rests at his side. The beauty of this exquisitely drawn figure, which has often been compared to the Doryphoros of Polykleitos*, inspired Sir John Beazley to name its anonymous draftsman the 'Achilles Painter,' an artist who is now known to have decorated more than three hundred vases in three techniques,2 black-figure, red-figure, and white-ground.

The Vatican amphora is Type B, a variety rare around 450-445 B.C., the date of this vase. On the reverse a female figure wearing a peplos and sakkos holds the vessels for a libation, a phiale and an oinochoe, by her waist. She faces the left, so that when one goes around the vase, it is easy to imagine direct eye contact between the two figures on the vase. This is part of the reason why she has been plausibly identified as Briseis, the young woman given to Achilles as war booty, but later taken from him by Agamemnon.

The vase is decorated in the red-figure technique and is one of a number of masterpieces produced by the Achilles Painter during the Middle phase of his career. Special details of drawing here include the shading between some of the folds of his cloak, the fine dilute glaze used for drawing the scales on the side of the cuirass, and the elaborate rendition of the profile eye, complete with eye lashes.''

The entire essay may be read here:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text...ection%3D1

* The Doryphoros or spear-bearer is a lost fifth-century Greek bronze by Polycletes, the demonstration of his Canon or work on the perfect proportions of the male body. We possess several Roman marble copies and it is perhaps the most beautiful expression of anatomical perfection in Classical sculpture. The Augustus of Prima Porta is in many ways derived from it.

[Feinman]

That's coming along nicely!

A tip (if you want it):  Use a very skinny nail set to punch your sewing holes ahead of stitching.  It separates the tissue fibers instead of removing them as in pre-drilling the holes.  The fibers close back in and lock down the thread/cord.  Don't get too far ahead of yourself or you need to re-open the holes.  I just did this for my triple sole Greek boots.  A bit of a pain, but the stitching flies!

Thanks Athena, I do that where I can, I use an awl wherever possible.  This hide is SO tough, I can't force an awl through it.  The breastplate that I have to lean my entire weight against the point of the awl to have a chance of penetrating it.  It would laugh at most arrows I think, hoot at spearthrusts, snore through cutting blows, and shed tank rounds!  

No but it is like super tough thick plastic.

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Yes, I have a pair of nice bronze greaves, and a pair in brass.  One pair I will tin for my Homeric Achilles panoply ((We can have fun discussing that later!!

But yes I have an iron spearhead and shaft, a xiphos (Devil's edge), and a common Deepeeka brass helmet which I actually like, and plan on painting a bit.  I have  Daniyaal helmet in bronzewith a crest, too, but I am going to sell it, like brass one better.  I need to make an authentic scabbard for my xiphos (doesn't look exactly like one on vase, but is authentic).  I need a chiton and footwear!  Maybe I could commission some from Athena when I could afford?
I also have a halfway done bronze/brass shield effigy and decent shield I have repainted.

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I have a lot of thoughts about this stuff, that I'll share as I get further along. When attempting things like this, one learns a lot, that is the value of indulging in it.

[Clavdivs]

It will be an absolute delight to see and to chew over a full Homeric panoply -- the wars between the Atreidae and Ilium, as tied up as they are in the foundation of Rome, are fascinating, as well as producing the three greatest pieces of poetry ever written.

Even for people like myself, who have never wielded an awl in their lives, the information about the toughness of the hide is of incredible value -- supplementing literary accounts and replacing the old debunked glued linen linothorax with a much more plausible form of armour. If you happened to have a spare scrap of treated hide, you ought to send it to someone who can use a bow and see how it fares!

[Feinman]

Here is the testing of a sample of Egyptian armour I made for Mike Loades for the NOVA episode "Pharaoh's Chariot" footage didn't nake it in, but is on NOVA site. I am also in process of reconstructing an Egyptian armour construced nearly identically to Tut's. Anyway this sample was made from much thiner hide than the nterior piece of hide in the breastplate. Of course it is also scale, with those advantages.

https://youtu.be/gFxkYmqIX1w


https://www.pinterest.com/tfeinman/armou...an-armour/

[Clavdivs]

Tremendously interesting -- many thanks.

[Feinman]

You'll notice that like the ptyreges in the depiction, the scales on the side panels also have painted stripes near their bottom edges! Looks like some glaze came off in firing, some over time..

[Clavdivs]

Yes --a most interesting detail and one I am sorry to say I missed! The arrangement seems to be overlapping rows of three and two.

[Feinman]

Yes --a most interesting detail and one I am sorry to say I missed! The arrangement seems to be overlapping rows of three and two.

I don't think anyone has noticed it before.  I've calculated each side panel at 4-3-4-3 etc.  Artist is only showing visible scales, panel curves around to connect to back panel.  Each scale is pretty broad, a little over 1.5" wide.

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Hi Joe!

[Feinman]

More pics in a day or two, almost done with back, starting to sew yoke together.

[Feinman]

The back in progress.  I have used a thinner hide for the back so it is more flexible, as the front is quite rigid.  I also am edging the top and bottom with goat leather instead of the hide.  The flaps from the yoke will be secured above the starburst / lion panel.  The hide looks a bit dirty, but it will bleach to a nice cream with the oil wax mixture, as the front did.  I took advantage natural creases in the hide so that the back panel will stay fairly flush against the upper back.

[Clavdivs]

 Absolutely beautiful work as ever. 

I wondered if you had a source for the back decoration -- the ubiquitous eight-rayed star is derived from the yoke -- a motif which, incidentally, is alluded to in the eighteeth chapter of the second book of the Iliad: “Up now, Zeus-born Patroclus, master of horsemen. Lo, I see by the ships the rush of consuming fire. Let it not be that they take the ships and there be no more escaping! Do on my armour with all haste, and I will gather the host.” 

 So spake he,and Patroclus arrayed him in gleaming bronze. The greaves first he set about his legs; beautiful they were, and fitted with silver ankle-pieces; next he did on about his chest the corselet of the swift-footed son of Aeacus, richly-wrought, and spangled with stars.  And about his shoulders he cast the silver-studded sword of bronze, and thereafter the shield, great and sturdy; and upon his mighty head he set the well-wrought helmet with horse-hair crest, and terribly did the plume nod from above; and he took two valorous spears, that fitted his grasp.''

Assuming the reconstruction to be conjectural, there could hardly have been chosen a better motif for this first panoply of Achilles (as opposed to the Olympian panoply that Hephaestus forges for him after this first panoply is stripped from the corpse of Patroclus by Hector). 

I have been hunting through my collection of pictures and as yet have not found a rear view of a spolas with the lions.They do, however, have an extremely respectable pedigree -conventionalised lions are by no means uncommon. Your paintings have echoes of the Nemean lion on the stamnos, c. 490 B.C.E. (a couple of generations before your source), with the rather ungainly name of Philadelphia L-64-185 -- the conventionalised carriage of the tail is identical.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/lion.html

All in all, marvellous work -- the only response I have to add is ''keep it coming!

P.S. I have no idea why there is a little scowling face in the corner of this message -- I have never learnt how these smilies work.

[Feinman]

Thanks for the kind words of encouragement, Patrick!  There is no specific source for the lions, but they seem within the realm of possibility, and the lions are derived from a number of depictions I have seen in the past.

Yes, we stewed over the descriptions of armour in the Iliad over at the Bronze Age Center for quite some time.  
Here is the cuirass portion of my Achilles panoply, made by Jeffrey Hildebrandt, who also made the Agamemnon cuirass for Dan H.  I'll be making the shield and helmet, and have a good pair of greaves I will tin.  

The Hildebrandt cuirass:



I have pauldrons for it too, from Jeffrey!