Title: More Company Advertisement Than Technical Work
Product review: The title of Rob Valentine's work The Art of Making Armour: a Craftsman's Guide to Creating Authentic Reproductions is a bit misleading. While it does show extensive photographs of the armourer at work, it offers very little substance in the way of techniques and methods. The text, what little there is, gives the reader scant insight to the craft. For example, a section is dedicated to the fact that his armoury produces their own rivets, while this is an interesting tidbit, it has more of a feel of a company ad brochure than an instructional work.Often the photos are not in sequence (for example, early in the work, a breastplate is shown being worked, and then suddenly on the same page photos of a chin piece) and lessen the impact of the work. Instead of teaching, the work tends more to show how his techniques offer the client quality pieces, again giving the reader a sense that this is more of an advertisement than actual scholarly intruction.
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