The Chest-Adornment

After the creation of my two arm pieces I decided to go bigger and create a piece of body adornment which takes its two main pieces of inspiration from the technique of fold forming. Which has appeared through out my project and the piece of armour called unsurprisingly a chest-plate. Which where first made out of leather. Later versions where made of bronze, iron and steel, even after the invention of gun powder chest-plates often referred to as a breast-plate where still the best body defence again a melee weapon like a sword or axe.

Unlike the breast-plates of old, my creation is not designed to repel attacks from arrows, swords and any other weapon that you could name. Though it may provide some protection from glancing shots of a sword for example. But many kings and rulers like king Henry 8th of England had sets of armour which where not made with 'combat' in mind but where purely decorative but would still protect you.


It is here where the term 'ceremonial' Armour comes in, a set of armour that is highly decorated and is worn to be looked at and the more elaborate the armour the richer and more influential you where.

    

Starting At The Beginning

I have been working on creating pieces of body adornment that are inspired by natural and organic Armour, and made from copper using fold forming.

Frst Steps of Body Adornment

Once I had looked and decided
what style and idea I wanted to go with as a piece of adornment using fold forming I made a test piece to see what it looked like and its fit.

This piece of adornment would fit onto the wearers wrist as demonstrated.

 

This is a fellow artist (Andy) being a model for a number of my pieces, you can see the piece that I have just mentioned on his fore-arm my first colour experiment around his wrist, two of my experimental pieces on his finger and thumb and also another piece that I created as body adornment place over his upper-arm

this piece was made to fit to my upper arm and is the biggest piece of fold forming I have made to date but due to the material only being 0.5mm thick copper it is very light.

 

Natural Armored Animals

These are 2 animals that i took inspiration from for some of my work. The upper image is of a pangolin or armoured anteater who's armour is supposedly strong enof to protect it from the bit of a lion, and the bottom photo is of an armadillo who's armour has been proved by a story in the news where a man in the USA shot at an armadillo with a revolver and the bullet deflected of the armour and hit the man in the leg which I think proves the armours strength.

 

This is what these animals inspired me to create I have had many comments from my colleges saying how much it looks like an armadillo I would like to hear what you think does it look like an armadillo and if not please leave a comment and tell me what you think it looks like.