The phrase “to throw down the gauntlet” means to situation a problem, and that is understood everywhere in the English-speaking world — even by those that don’t know what, precisely, a gauntlet is. “The phrase itself comes from the French phrase gantelet, and referred to the heavy, armored gloves worn by medieval knights,” writes Historical past.com’s Elizabeth Harrison. “In an age when chivalry and private honor had been paramount, throwing a gauntlet on the ft of an enemy or opponent was thought of a grave insult that would solely be answered with private fight, and the offended occasion was anticipated to ‘take up the gauntlet’ to acknowledge and settle for the problem.”
How many people, right here within the twenty-first century, have ever actually taken up a gauntlet? Adam Savage by no means has, which can come as a shock to followers of the previous MythBusters co-host and fanatic of fight applied sciences previous, current, and future.
Or at the least he hadn’t till making the brand new video above, which finds him within the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s Arms and Armor conservation lab. There, armorer Ted Hunter has opened up the museum’s “gauntlet drawer” and laid out an array of real examples for Savage to take up, all of them made in Germany or Italy within the sixteenth century.
Every of those gauntlets was made in a special fashion, with particulars like a fine-meshed chain mail underside (to make it simpler to maintain a grip in your sword) or perhaps a locking spring catch (to make it not possible to let go of your sword in any respect). Savage marvels at these options, but additionally the visibly painstaking craftsmanship that went into each side of those gauntlets’ building, which he has greater than sufficient expertise to grasp. His enthusiasm and information are evidenced by the wealth of armor-related movies on his Youtube channel, together with a sequence about constructing his personal full go well with of armor, a problem that it was inevitable he would set himself towards — a gauntlet, in different phrases, he each threw down and took up.
Associated content material:
Make and Put on Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer
Get Dressed & Battle in 14th Century Armor: A Reenactment
What It’s Prefer to Truly Battle in Medieval Armor
What’s It Prefer to Battle in fifteenth Century Armor?: A Shocking Demonstration
Watch Adam Savage Construct Barbarella’s House Rifle in One Day
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His tasks embody the Substack e-newsletter Books on Cities, the e book The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Comply with him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
