Tally ho!

Arms and Armor Hall

Metropolitan Museum of New York

February 2010

One of my very favorite books as a child was From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. This marvelous book is the tale of young Claudia Kincaid, who decides she wants to run away, but feels one must have a goal that one runs away to. So she decides that she will run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and she brings her younger brother along.

The cover of the book - at least the older paperback editions - shows the two children in their pajamas, each standing on the side of the archway leading into the Arms & Armor Hall, where you see the above mounted horsemen. The first time I ever visited the Met, many years ago when I was in high school, this was the first place in the museum that I wanted to see. It still tickles me pink to see this display, and remember that book.

The Met's armor display has an impressive selection of ornate armors, swords and shields. (I am curious if their sister museum in NYC, The Cloisters, contains more; but I haven't gotten up there - yet.) It is a wonderful place to wander around if you have any amount of interest in arms and armor.

One of my favorite breastplates in the collection is displayed on the west side of the primary Arms & Armor Hall; it contains an etching of mother and child that reminds me of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. While not the most ornate piece of armor in the collection, it displays the incredible craftsmanship of which armorsmiths were capable of producing, hundreds of years before the invention of such things as laser-etching and so forth.

Ornate armor

Metropolitan Museum of New York

February 2010