What Does 16th Century Armor Have That I Don’t Have?

After all, we’ve both got style, right?

I was volunteering in the back room stacks at the art museum this week working through dozens of rare books on armor.  Let me tell you–the images were stunning.  Aside from the completely bizarre notion of gentlemen running around encased in metal (remember we’re even talking metal shoes here!), the artwork and designs captured there are impressive in their abundant creativity and detailed craftsmanship.

When you think of art history and recall that early man transported the Makapansgat pebble around with him — just a pebble that looked like a face — for some distance, it makes you realize how much creativity we were born with.  Looking through the graphic designs on the armor, frequently abstract, it makes you wonder how much of your work has been envisioned before by someone else and to what use?  Knowing that art has moved backwards and forwards between abstraction and reality, from perfectly captured Greek statues of the human form to awkward bodies on ambivalent planes in early religious paintings then again to the accuracy of Dutch painting and back to Picasso’s cubist human forms, it makes you wonder about repeated ideas and designs.

In the end, looking at these sophisticated drawings on armor, I think the answer is:  shelf-life and longevity.  After all, the fabric and paper goods I design very rarely last!