For years I’ve been fascinated with armours, from the knights of Europe in the middle ages, The Crusades, The Bronze Age, Romans, the scaled paper armours from China, the list goes on. The one thing you can count on during my travels is that if there’s armour on display at a museum I’m there, carefully studying every helmet, types of links in chainmail, chest plates, metal detail and not to forget the swords! I love metal work (especially the hilt – handles) 

I find the design and materials used throughout history absolutely fascinating, but by far my favourite armour has to belong to the Samurai’s of Japan, I can’t begin to tell you how many Samurai armours I have carefully studied over the years especially on my trips to Japan, the craftsmanship is incredible.  

Japan has a long history with armour that can be traced back to the early 4^th century AD. The earliest armour design in ancient Japan was a Cuirass chest plate and metal helmet, throughout the years these armours morphed into incredible pieces of military art introducing small metal / leather plates that were attached together by leather thongs. 

My interest in these magnificent pieces of design and history were my starting point in my screen printing journey at University. The previous years of designing and making costumes always came to a bit of a block as far as finding the right fabrics for a particular project, I had always wanted to design and print my own fabrics, but had never had the opportunity to learn how to expose screens and screen print. 

A friend of mine bought me back a beautiful glass ink pen from Italy that I constantly use to draw my designs with, the Indian ink gives me a clear opaque line (great for copying your design onto transparency film for the exposure process onto screens) and a lovely hand drawn line that has the effect of an organic imperfect line. I went about researching Japanese designs, looking at countless kimono designs and drawing many variations until I hit upon the right combination for each section of the armour. 

Re-use / re-purpose

As with most of my work I re-use materials from previous costumes or with this particular piece, previous art works from my print studio. The fabric is repurposed from and a backdrop curtain that was used in photo shoots, the Kote (arm plates), Do (chest plate), Haidate (thigh protectors) and Suneate (leg protectors) are all made with previous costumes I had been working on, each piece unpicked and dismantled.