Buckhurst Armour The Almain Armourer's Album

A fine armour for war, made in the Greenwich royal workshop during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, probably for Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (1536-1608), richly decorated with etched and gilt strapwork and borders. The main decorative theme is a dynamic ‘zigzag and guilloche’ pattern, against a blackened and granulated background.

This is a design for armour for Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), Lord Buckhurst and 1st Earl of Dorset, and comes from an album of designs known as the Almain Armourer's Album, or Jacob Album. The Album is one of the Victoria and Albert Museum's great Elizabethan treasures. It was compiled between 1557 and 1587 by Master Armourer, Jacob Halder, and records, in vivid detail, notable commissions at the English Royal Armoury in Greenwich during those years.

This design shows a light cavalry armour for battle with supplementary pieces for jousting. The supplementary pieces include a reinforcing breastplate, saddle steels and stirrups. The design is painted reddish brown to denote that the armour should be heat-treated to a deep blue and deecorated with vertical bands of blackened and gilded etching resembling the embroidery on contemporary doublets. The designs in the album are stencilled, inked and painted with watercolour.

This design is annotated 'My Lorde Bucarte'. Thomas Sackville was created Lord Buckhurst in 1567 and 1st Earl of Dorset in 1604. He was Ambassador to France in 1568 and 1571, and to Holland in 1587. He was elected a Knight of the Garter in 1589. This armour survives in excellent condition in the Wallace Collection in London. It has lost its original blued surface colouring but the gilding and etching survive in good condition.

The production of armour was a highly sophisticated process. The designs in the Album record armours whose manufacture combined the skills of the artist, the tailor, the blacksmith, the goldsmith, the engineer and the locksmith. Their use demanded the skills of the courtier, the soldier, the diplomat, the sportsman, the actor and the daredevil.