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Weapons and Armor
Contributor(s): Hart, Harold M. (Editor)
ISBN: 0486242420     ISBN-13: 9780486242422
Publisher: Dover Publications
OUR PRICE:   $16.16  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: February 1982
Qty:
Annotation: Pictorial arsenal of war-making instruments offers over 1400 copyright-free illustrations of battle-axes, bows & arrows, cannons, catapults, clubs, daggers, handguns, tanks, suits of armor, helmets, much more culled from old archives and publications. Sources listed. Index. Captions.

Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Technology & Engineering | Military Science
- History | Military - Weapons
- Photography
Dewey: 623.441
LCCN: 81017323
Series: Dover Pictorial Archive
Physical Information: 0.5" H x 9.26" W x 12.21" (1.44 lbs) 192 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
A misericorde is a medieval poniard or dagger made for one purpose -- to give the coup de grace or killing stroke. It was a beautiful, deadly instrument with a graphic mission; its very shape and cut graphically manifest its age and those who used it.
Weapons throughout history chronicle ages, styles, and approaches to life and death; for artists, a weapons archive is a pictorial arsenal of powerful imagery. Here is such an arsenal: over 1,400 copyright-free illustrations of weapons and armor epitomizing the warlike times and peoples of this planet.
Twenty-two categories of offensive and defensive arms and armor include battle-axes, bows and arrows, cannons, catapults, clubs, daggers, handguns, machine guns, powder horns, rifles, spears, swords, tanks, suits of armor, helmets, shields, and other means of combat. These copyright-free black-and-white illustrations (with a few half-tones) have been culled from almost 50 separate sources, ranging from books of ancient armor to scarce foreign periodicals and engravings. Along with the arms themselves are those who wield them -- soldiers, warriors, knights, horsemen, hunters, jousters, duelists, arms manufacturers, aborigines, centurions, dragoons, musketeers, samurai, crusaders, in full period regalia. One plate identifies all the parts of a 17th-century suit of armor -- visor, gorget, tassets, epauliere, cuisse, chain mail, gauntlet, etc.; many show details of intricate Renaissance and modern carving on pommels, blades, rifle butts, and boomerangs. Some remarkable devices include the Chinese Tartar 2-handed sword, Malay creese, Tormentum, Maxim gun, 16th-century Italian cross-bow, Soviet tank from World War II, Indian damascened cuirass, bamboo lance, halberd, and the scimitar.
Unusual strokes may be visually delivered by such instruments as the Patagonian bola, a cane sword, the Zarabatana native blow gun, and the infamous "holy water sprinkler."
Artists and designers will not find these rare emblems of warfare gathered together elsewhere in such a clearly printed format, so quickly accessible; historians of art, industry, and war as well as weapons fanciers will marvel at all the picturesque means here depicted of giving the coup de grace.