Weight: 0.5-0.8 kg each


Mail gloves or mittens had been worn on the hands of armoured men since the twelfth century, but the protection they offered had never been that good. They didn’t effectively protect the knuckles or fingers from being crushed by blows.

Gauntlets with metal plates tried to achieve this. Many different methods were tried in the early fourteenth century. They mostly involved riveting small plates of iron or other metal onto leather, either on the inside or outside. The hand armour was then sewn onto a leather or material glove.

How was it used?

Once the hauberk began to be worn with three-quarter sleeves rather than with mittens, metal plates could be worn on the forearms with the armoured cuffs of the gauntlets overlapping them. This was another step in covering the whole of the limbs in metal plates.