Higgins Armory Collection

Check out this 3D model on our Sketchfab page! This poleyn — a knee guard from a suit of armor — shows how brilliant armor design could be. Its overlapping plates slide over each other so the wearer can bend the knee freely without exposing it to danger. And that heart-shaped extension? It helps protect the vulnerable back of the knee, one of the trickiest spots to cover in plate armor.
The interior of joints like the knee and elbow, and parts of the body that pressed against a rider's horse couldn’t be fully plated, so they relied on smart engineering like this — often with mail underneath for backup protection.

Poleyn for the right knee with extension plate. Probably Italian, about 1400–1420. Steel. The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.909
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The last of the series featuring the students work from Prof. Stella Wang’s Romance & Conquest in British Literature at Emmanuel College! In this video, Bella St. Martin connects an axehead from the Higgins Collection to the axe used in the beheading game (!) at the center of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This axehead has just gone on view as one of the nearly 1000 objects in the Open Storage section of our newly opened Arms and Armor Galleries--if you’re looking, you can find it at the very bottom of zone 9!

Head of a "Bearded" Axe, possibly English. 1000–1350. Iron. The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.675