Hauberk (1400s): Art, History and Details

Hauberk (1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A hauberk is a mail shirt that generally reached to the knee and was the predominant form of metal body defense throughout Europe until about 1350. Knights wore mail over a padded undergarment known as an aketon and would have been supplemented by a metal helmet and a shield. After the development of full plate armor, mail continued to be a linking element or accessory well into the 1500s.

Object facts

• Title: Hauberk
• Date: 1400s
• Culture: European, 15th century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: riveted steel rings
• Dimensions: Diameter: 1.1 cm (7/16 in.); Overall: 128.3 x 91.4 cm (50 1/2 x 36 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1817

A detail from the museum

A hauberk might include as many as a quarter million steel rings.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.
• Noel, William, and Daniel H. Weiss. The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible. Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2002.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.