Armouries

 first became aware of the decoration and engraving on suits of armour, when I created a puzzle for an education pack, designed for use in the White Tower at the Tower of London. This puzzle was based on a beautiful suit and horse set belonging to Henry VIII.   I was fascinated by the elegance and intricacy of the craftsmanship used to decorate what was essentially an item created for conflict. I often remembered these beautiful objects and so when I began designing scarves, I approached the Royal Armouries with a view to incorporating them into one of my designs. I also liked the idea of taking something so solid and substantial and turning it into something delicate.
I originally viewed hundreds of exquisite items in the Armouries’ collection but finally narrowed it down to about 10 and this scarf is the result of 3 of the items....
Because of the importance and value of the objects the Royal armouries provided the original images as photographs.  I then worked on digitally, cutting away the unwanted areas and working on the clarity and finish that I wanted. I then laid the finished “fretwork” design onto a brass background which helped to emphasize the metallic finish of the original objects . It took almost 3 weeks and the creation of over 120 images to come up with the final version.

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.The main decoration is from object:
iii.1358.  Back plate and tassettes  1620 in the War Gallery Leeds.

Other decoration taken from:
Object vi.6 Horse Armour given to Henry viii by Maximillion I, decorated by Paul Van Vreland and displayed in the Tournament Gallery at Leeds.
Object vi.4  from the Silvered and Engraved armour  belonging to Henry VIII and displayed on the horse armour in the White Tower, Tower of London. (I haven’t included the provenance of this item, because I believe it has recently changed)
 

I also worked on a second design which will go into production next year sometime.

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Royal Armouries