The military objects on display in the “Arms and Armour” exhibition are often works of craftsmanship and even art. They include items that can be considered masterpieces, as well as those that, although not outstanding works, are extremely interesting because of the designs on them. Unfortunately, these often escape our attention. The decoration is too small or the light falls on another element of the object, making it impossible to see all the advantages of the object. Sometimes we are unable to notice something, and it is only by pointing out a particular fragment that we realise the uniqueness of the objects we are looking at.
Almost every object has interesting details, both technical and decorative. Here we look at a selection of decorations that may go unnoticed because of the distance from the object, its location or the subtlety of the pattern.
The helmet with its characteristic pointed shape was inspired by the appearance of the headgear used by the Ottoman army in the 16th century. But the decoration of this Nuremberg product is entirely European. Can’t you see it? It’s possible, you just have to look closely. The entire surface of the helmet is decorated with an intricate acid-etched floral pattern. Originally the helmet was also gilded. At present, traces of gilding can still be found between the recesses of the channeling and in a few places on the rim.
The procession of horses is certainly a spectacular element of the “Arms and Armour” exhibition. At the same time, however, the size of the figures, their distance from the viewer and the way in which the various elements are assembled mean that many details cannot be seen. This is the case with the beautiful saddles, the front and back of which are richly decorated.
A rider wearing a chainmail is sitting on a bay horse and a rare Polish saddle with unique decoration. The pommels are covered with silver sheet and then gilded. The surface is decorated in two ways. The first is the application of small silver ornaments, some of which are small three-leafed palmettes. Most of the silver accessories are arranged in ‘diamonds’. They run along the edges or are gathered in groups, neatly framing with arcs the sockets in which red cabochons or turquoises are set.
The next saddle is much easier to see because it is on a horse without a rider. In this case, the whole of the horse’s equipment: bridle, breastplate, saddle and crupper form a coherent whole, decorated in a uniform manner. These are red cabochons set in gold and surrounded by rings of diamonds (or zircons replacing them). The surface of the saddle plates is also decorated with plant, geometric and floral motifs. It is worth noting how different techniques were used to extract a pattern from a flat surface. Plant forms are engraved and the surfaces are polished. In order to separate them from the background, the latter was matted with a fine punch, leaving a dense, dotted pattern.
The row on the fifth horse, adorned with two wings, is composed of very small elements, but certainly of great beauty, combining different decorative techniques. The photograph shows an enlargement of one of the plates. The gilded surface is decorated with a convex repoussé floral pattern in the oriental style. Although it stands out from the surface, making it easier to read, the background has been matted to make the dense flora even more visible. Some parts are made of applied decorated silver plates. In this case, the so-called niello with dark paste is also arranged in a plant flagellum, but in concentric circles.
A Karabela sabre of eastern provenance is suspended from a mannequin representing the so-called “pancerny” parade armament. Both the hilt and the scabbard fittings are of silver. The surface is decorated with a symmetrical axial floral pattern. The repoussé and embossed flowers and stems have also been treated with a fine stylus to add texture through engraving.
A characteristic feature of oriental decoration was a passion for floral patterns, but arranged symmetrically, most often in axial compositions. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, freer compositions were more often used. A good example of this is the missiourka helmet, which consists of a gilded upper part covering the skull and serving as a fastening element for the chain mail hanging down. Its surface is decorated with circles that intersect to create spaces for decoration. These include floral arrangements, which are treated in a very casual and realistic manner, with a visible painterly flair.
Most of the missiourka helmets associated with Polish lands are plain and unadorned. The one here, decorated with flowers, is certainly one of the most beautiful in Polish museums.
The mace in showcase no. 9, traditionally associated with the figure of Stanisław Jabłonowski, is unique, not least because of the technique used to make it. One of its characteristics is its extraordinary precision, which required enormous patience from the craftsman. It also required good eyesight or the use of magnifying glasses. What is it all about?
Once again, it is niello, a dark paste that was applied to previously carved grooves. This is all the darker decoration that contrasts with the gold and is visible on the surface. You can see an enlarged fragment of such a decoration in the photo and try to imagine how precise tools must have been used to apply the pattern, for example inside flower petals that are only a few millimetres long!
Opposite the mace, in a display case of Turkish weapons, we can see another interesting example of niello, this time in silver. It is a karabela with a gold decorated blade. Its white bone handle has a silver crossguard with darker, denser patterns. You need an eagle’s eye to make out the shapes. It takes a magnifying glass or macro lens to see that this dense pattern is different from other, usually floral, oriental decorations. It consists of geometric patterns in the form of circles and crosses only a few millimetres in diameter.
Let us stay with niello, which was one of the most effective and at the same time most subtle methods of decoration.
We can try to see such an example of delicacy on the Karabela marked with the number 7. The manufacturing technique is similar to that of the golden mace. Here, too, we have a repoussé floral pattern in which niello is only used to accentuate and fill in some motifs with very small accents.
The most beautiful rapier in the Museum’s collection is the one with a semicircular basket handle. Its surface is decorated with openwork, a pattern created by cutting out the background. If you look closely, you will certainly notice individual elements of the pattern that form a fantasy garden with mythical creatures, including a bird of paradise with its wings outstretched.
The Hunting Weapons Showcase, distinguished by its green interior, contains so many exhibits that it may be difficult at first to identify the most interesting pieces. You can start with a shotgun, which is placed in the centre of a special gun stand.
It was made in the Tsarist factory in Tula in the mid-18th century and has an unusual decoration on the barrel. If you look at it from the right angle, you can see golden stripes. At first it was thought that the barrel had been forged with gold added, as the stripes run the length of the barrel and look as if they had been melted into the steel. It is now thought to be an inlay, i.e. the gold was laboriously applied after the forging process.
The French firearms factory of Jean Le Page (1779-1822) was one of the leading manufacturers of luxury firearms in Europe. His guns were characterised by rich and varied decoration.
The ‘Arms and Armour’ exhibition includes two examples of shotguns from the Le Page workshop that have in common a full-face carved image of an animal or mythological figure at the base of the stock neck.
In this case, it is an elephant. The second shotgun, in display case 25, has the carved face of a ribald Faun.
The motif of Faun, the god of forests and fertility with hairy goat’s legs, was used to decorate firearms not only by Jean Le Page but also by Lorenz Dreschler more than 200 years earlier. We see him on a characteristic target shotgun with a spiral stock.
The decoration of the shotgun is very rich and consists mainly of bone inlays. In the midst of all this richness, it is easy to overlook an unusual solution for firearms: the edge of the stock is covered with a bone inlay. It became a showpiece for the engraver, who carved it with a precise grotesque composition typical of the late 16th century.
This is one of the most surprising horsetacks in the museum’s collection. It is also the most delicate. It is made up of 1.5 cm wide stripes bordered with silver and crimson thread. The stripes are decorated with small gilded convex bumps measuring only one centimetre in diameter and one centimetre in height. Each of these miniature rings has 6 enamelled stars surrounding 1.5 mm rubies. The precision and consistency of making hundreds of enamelled stars and polished rubies represents the highest level of craftsmanship.
It was to belong to Prince Józef Poniatowski himself. It is certainly made by masters, but we cannot say in which workshop, or even in which country, this miniature work of equestrian art was created. The preservation of the prescribed colours of the ribbons, identical to those of the officers’ sashes, could point to Poland. However, there is no equivalent in our country to confirm this. Another hypothesis involves Hungarian or even Italian craftsmen. As long as no other documented analogy is found, the place of origin of this souvenir must remain a matter of speculation.