Armorers' Tools of Life and Death
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpet.”
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
As far back as the Bronze Age when they first appeared in historic records, armorers have been in a difficult trade. The armorers’ destiny was to paradoxically find the best ways to preserve life while inflicting death to the enemy of the kingdom they worked for. Hence, the logical symbol associated with life and death that can be found on armorers’ tools is the spiral. The swirl rotates away from its epicenter to represent life with its perpetual movement reaching towards the infinite. The reverse scroll closes on itself to symbolize death. The clockwise and counterclockwise spirals are thought to have first appeared around the year 3200 BC at the Celtic site of Newgrange in Ireland. They can be seen on the stone gate of a large burial site dedicated to the pagan goddess of fertility. The back of the cave behind this spiral decorated stone gate can only be illuminated once a year by the piercing rays of the sun at the summer solstice. In this respect, it is quite similar to the site of Stonehenge.
We known little about the armorers of five thousand years ago, other than they must have existed in large numbers, given the profusion and sophistications of weapons from that period. During the Middle Ages, armorers had special privileges like the right to work at night and to employ more apprentices and workers than other trades. Throughout the ages, the armorer’s fate has been tied to life and death.
The axe shown here is one of the oldest known dated tools and the oldest traced armorer's axe along with a similar axe apparently made by the same artisan given the similarity in scroll design. This tool is dated 1613 and marked with the owner’s initials G. S., most probably by the master armorer who made it. This axe still has its original elm handle with a perfect fit to the blade. They both display these two inverted spirals, symbols of life and death, reminiscent of the earliest mysterious Celtic spirals carved on the stone gates of Newgrange.
These are among the finest tools ever made in the 16th and early 17th centuries. A look at the scrolls cut and forged within the blade demonstrates an incredible technical prowess on the part of its maker. Armorer was always a very special trade requiring different skills in both wood and metal working. Armorers' tools did their duty with sharp precision. The scene in the 1610-1612 painting from Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), The Return from War: Mars disarmed by Venus, on exhibit at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, shows armorer’s tools in the setting of the forge in the background of Mars and Venus. Some are simple tools common to other trades such as the compass and pincers. Others are very elaborate tools contemporary to the 1613 axe above.
To better understand the armorer’s trade, we must go back in history to the hundreds of armorers who worked to fit the Roman legions in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Through the dark ages, the craft of the armorer remained essential to the survival of its royal and noble clients. From the Middle Ages, armorers turned a necessary trade into an art. Under the impulse of the Great Crusades between the years 1095 and 1271 AD, armorers were prompted to improve upon the making of the mail (iron knitted garment) which was required to be highly resistant, flexible, and light.
German and Italian armorers became famous throughout the 14th to 16th centuries and their fame for best-designed armor and weapons traveled across Europe as did their royal and imperial clients. Examples abound in world museums today of complete, signed armors with mail, helmets, shields, and weaponry of all kind including the classic harquebus, but very few tools survived to our era. Most tools have been used to exhaustion, up until the point they would be forged again into new tools by the experienced blacksmiths like the files and rasps being reused into other kind of tools or artifacts. Tools occasionally appear in books and paintings. Jan Brueghel’s masterpiece "Venus at the Forge of Vulcan" painted in 1620 shows a fairly busy armorer's shop with many tools and parts of armor under production.
The most symbolic tool of the armorer is his iron framed saw with an adjustable blade perpendicular to the frame. There are a few fine examples in private collections and museums. The one shown below is dated 1660 and has its original frame, blade, and handle. Interestingly, it also displays spiral-like scrolls symbolizing life and death carved on its iron frame. Contrary to the 1613 axe who must have witnessed the great European wars including the Thirty Years War in Central Europe, the 1660 armorer’s saw was born at a time of peace. The year of its birth is when the Peace of Olivia was signed, ending the war between Austria, Poland, Sweden, and Brandenburg. The same year, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) painted his masterpiece, The View of Delft, while the Peace Treaty of Copenhagen ended the war between Sweden and Denmark.
Other than an armorer, a locksmith could use a saw with a blade perpendicular to the frame....