Rivet patterns on 17th century pike armour...

[Condottiere]

For us rivet counters out there: Rivet patterns on 17th century pike armour...

Pike armour is a particular sub-type of footman’s armour, in use mainly during the first half of the seventeenth century. To be honest, this post applies to the London Trained Bands and the Gentlemen of the Artillery Garden between 1635 and 1646. There were two primary styles in use in England, English, with larger flaring tassets, and Dutch, slightly more restrained in style and generally imported by returning troops during the thirty-years war.

Would anyone know any studies of pikemen armor, especially tasset styles, of other Continental participants of the Thirty Years' War and beyond? How would one differentiate a set of Italian tassets from Swedish ones? Since rivets on tassers were purely decorative, a demonstration of wealth in some instances, anyone published a book about it?