Category Archives: Buckles

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 8 – Manufacturing Buckles and Belt Ends

Posted on by

Last time we were talking about how generous the modern belt makers are with their metal – something that is a readily available and cheap resource today.

Comparing the belt fittings that we purchased at Pennsic to actual artifacts was very revealing. The first thing that I noticed was how thick and heavy the new metal pieces were in comparison to the actual artifacts. The thickness of the Pennsic purchased mounts on my belt was almost 1/16 of an inch, which was comparable to the pre-1600s mounts, but the mounts on my husband’s belt were a full 1/8 of an inch thick. The majority of the actual period mounts that I own are only about 1/16 of an inch thick. They often have hollowed out backs to reduce the amount of metal that is needed to make the piece, while making the piece look large.

Looking at the buckles, my buckle was 3/16 of an inch thick. My husband’s buckle was 1/4 inch thick at the end of the plate that is riveted to the belt, and 3/16 of an inch thick where it wraps around the cast part of the buckle.

But what did the real pre-1600 buckles and belt ends look like? Well, here are a few examples. You will notice that the form of the belt end immediately to the right of the buckle is virtually identical to the form of my husband’s belt end.

belt buckle and belt endsThese belt ends and the buckle look very much like the pieces that we bought, a tad smaller, but in the same ballpark, until we look at the construction techniques and the thickness and weight of the metal.

artifact buckle and ends sideviewAnd here is a side view of the actual artifacts. The artifacts are all laid against the sides of a large charcoal pencil. Looking at each one in turn, the buckle is in the lower left hand position. You can see that the cast part of the buckle is held in place by a folded piece of sheet metal, just like my husband’s buckle. The biggest difference? The thickness of the metal – my husband’s buckle is made with metal sheet that is almost 1/16 of an inch thick, while the period artifact is less than 1/32 of an inch thick, even allowing for the fact that my husband’s buckle is larger, the modern metal sheet is definitely quite beefy. One of the fun things about having intact rivets on this sort of buckle is that you can tell how thick the end of the leather belt was where it fit into the buckle. My husband’s leather belt is 3/16’s of an inch thick, and the pre-1600’s leather belt would have been 1/16 of an inch thick.

The belt end that looks like my husband’s is in the lower right position. You can see that it is not a solid cast piece. It is actually a sandwich of three pieces of metal, two outside pieces of thin sheet (each about 1/32 of an inch thick and a center cast piece of metal that is 1/16th of an inch thick. This makes the entire piece 1/8th of an inch thick, and it weighs, with the rivets still in place, .4 ounces. The leather belt would have been just about 1/16 of an inch thick.

The two top belt ends are both made from two single sheets of metal, riveted together. The upper right belt end has the thickest metal sheet – 1/16 of an inch thick, and the leather looks as if it would have been 1/16th of an inch thick. The upper left belt end was made with much thinner metal, only about 1/32 of an inch thick and the leather would have been 1/16th of an inch thick.

But what does all of this mean? Well we will talk about the possibilities next time!

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages ? – Part 7 – More Buckles

Posted on by

So last time I was wondering why buckles might be a bit smaller than we might expect. I proposed that some of the reasons could include cost, difficulty of construction, fashion, and functionality.

Looking at cost first – metal was expensive and valuable. Metal was dug out of ore deposits by hand and the smelting and processing of all metals was extremely labor and fuel intensive. Metals that were not available locally had to be imported, adding to the cost. Even the least expensive tin trinkets were cast in such a way as to minimize the use of metal while maximizing the effect. They were made as thin as possible while still allowing them to be functional.

I never really appreciated how much the frugal use of metal affected the manufacturing techniques used for dress accessories until I began making them myself and purchasing actual artifacts.

An excellent example are these buckles and belt ends. They are on two belts that my husband and I purchased at the Pennsic War about 18 years ago. We were looking for narrow belts with some pretty mounts, a buckle, and a belt end. I had seen lots of portraits with narrow belts and a few actual belt ends in museums, and these belts looked pretty good and seemed functional enough. And to be honest, they have worked perfectly well for all these years, and will probably make it for at least another five or six years. But now that I know what the real belt fitting look like it is very interesting to see the construction techniques.

First we have my belt buckle, belt end, and mounts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leather of the belt is 3/4 of an inch wide, a respectable width. The mounts are of an appropriate size, and while the buckle and the belt end are fairly large, they are believable.

If we look at the pieces from the side we can understand the actual construction techniques that were used.

my buckle sideviewThis picture shows graphically what it looks like when your solder does not match the color of the main pieces of metal. The actual forms of the pieces are fairly close to the forms of several dismantled pre-1600 buckles and belt ends that I have seen, but the period belt ends and buckles were not soldered, they were simply riveted together.

My husband’s belt uses slightly different construction techniques and suffers from slightly different flaws.

Henry's Buckle top view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leather belt in this case is 1 inch wide – again an acceptable width. The basic form of the pieces is based on period buckles and belt ends. And then we have the mounts.

Henrys belt mount

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lovely cast pieces that are definitely a period form and look quite nice.

And a side view of the buckle and belt end to show the actual construction techniques.

Henrys buckle side view

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see that the plate that holds this buckle in place is actually just a folded piece of metal, and the rivets hold the metal tight to the belt. The belt end is a solid cast piece with just a small area where the end of the leather belt can be inserted. The belt end weighs a ton – about an ounce all by itself. By Medieval terms this is a TOTAL waste of metal.

But how thick should the metal be? We will talk about that next time!

What size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 6 – Buckles!

Posted on by

Buckles. It seems an easy enough topic, but it turns out to be quite the pile of spaghetti.

First of all, based on most of the buckles that I see at SCA events buckles were huge prior to 1600. But, based on the artifacts that I see in my collection, and museum collections, they were often quite moderate in size.

Second, a buckle, is a buckle, is a buckle. Or is it?

Buckles(photo credit: Irene Davis 2015, from the Eirny Historic Collection)

This picture shows just a few of the Medieval buckles in my collection. The buckle with the strange looking hook is called a locking buckle, and this particular one, along with the buckle in the top left corner are both from Northern Ireland. The other buckles are all from England.

So let’s start with the simplest part – the size of buckles. It really isn’t a mystery. While buckles big enough to make a rodeo cowboy drool may look pretty cool, they really have very little to do with the buckles that were actually worn by most people prior to 1600. We have tons of buckles available for viewing on museum sites and lots of portraits of people wearing belts with buckles.

Let’s look at an example. How about a family portrait of Archduke Maximilian II, painted in 1563? If anyone could afford a big fancy buckle, he sure could. But you won’t find one in this picture.

This portrait of Queen Mary I, by Master John, shows the belts that were typical for women during this time frame. There is no real buckle, just some sort of fastener that allows the length of the belt to be adjusted.

Well surely someone had big buckles before 1600! So I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum online collections, and looked for the biggest buckles that I could find. This amazing Frankish buckle (675-725 AD) is 6 inches by 2 11/16 inches. Pretty respectable!  And this Visigothic buckle (550-600 AD) is 5 3/8 by 2 3/8 inches.

The first thing that I noticed when I started looking for big buckles was that large display type buckles were usually made up of several pieces. This Merovingian buckle is an excellent example. Each individual piece of the buckle is really not that huge, but the overall effect of the pieces when they are put together is pretty spectacular.

The second thing that I noticed about larger display type buckles, is that even most of those were really not that wide (the top to bottom dimension on our giant Frankish buckle in the Met was less than 3 inches).

Why do we see these limitations in size in pre-1600 buckles? Some of the obvious possibilities include cost, difficulty of construction. fashion, and functionality.

And that is what we will talk about next time.