Sunday morning in the studio.
I am scruffy, fuelled by green tea rather than dignity, and making no attempt to look like a polished media professional. This is probably for the best. Maybe I talk too quickly, maybe you can’t understand my London gob, if so I have written a transcript below for you to google translate.
I wanted to show why I’m starting to use more video on Substack. Photographs will always matter, but armour is difficult to understand as a flat image. It has weight, depth, curve, texture, damage, repair and presence. A photograph can show you the object. Video can show you how it behaves in the hand.
Rather than dressing everything up into glossy nonsense, I thought I would start simply: a Sunday morning, a camera, a few battlefield helmets, and a chance to look at the details properly.
I want this to feel as if you are in the room with me, seeing the armour as I see it, without the usual layers of polish and performance. The Mayfair-based professional can remain safely locked in storage for the morning. Today you get me as I am.
Right then, scruffy or not, let’s get down to it. Watch the video above…
For those with the attention span of a startled sparrow, here are the main points.
In this video I’m looking at what I call the Sekigahara Five, a small group of battlefield helmets associated with the Shimazu clan. These are not random rusty lids dragged from the back of a barn. They have already been displayed in the Gifu museum as part of a Sekigahara battle exhibition, so they are very much recognised as museum-level objects. The difference is that they are now with me, and the next stage is restoration.
They are rusty, tired, battered, but not like tempura, and have clearly suffered over the centuries, but that is also what makes them so valuable as teaching objects. Before anything is restored, you can see the truth of them. You can see the damage, the construction, the losses, and the areas where time has been far from kind. This is the stage most people never get to see, because armour is usually presented either as a finished display piece or as a neat catalogue photograph. Here, you are seeing the work before the glamour returns.
The real purpose of the video is to explain how these helmets were made during the Momoyama period. You can see how the iron was patched, shaped, joined and worked into form. These are practical battlefield helmets from a violent age, not decorative fantasies. They were made to be worn, used, repaired and kept in service.
The restoration will not be a cosmetic tidy-up with modern filler and a hopeful prayer. Where iron is needed, I will use actual iron from the period, so the repair belongs materially to the helmet. The lacquer work will also be carried out through the proper traditional stages, using the correct process from the foundation layers onwards. It is slow, technical work, and it has to be done properly or there is no point doing it at all.
That is why I wanted to film them now. Once restored, they will look stronger, more coherent and much easier to understand, but this raw stage matters. You can see the rust, the broken surfaces, the old construction, the repairs, the losses and the problems that have to be solved. This is the part of Japanese armour restoration that is almost never shown.
So, for anyone who does not want to watch the whole thing, the point is simple: these are the Sekigahara Five, Shimazu-associated Momoyama-period battlefield helmets, previously displayed at Gifu as part of a Sekigahara exhibition, and now in my studio for a full traditional restoration.
Please note that I am not here to teach restoration, I’m happy to explain process but not instructional applied techniques, if you want that go to Japan and study.
As usual, please feel free to throw in some questions.
Cheers
David
