I have a wee project (famous last words) to paint up a few 1066 era figures for a school history diorama.

Way out of my 20th century period/comfort zone.

Advice on shades for helmet/chain mail and other clothing very welcome.

Natural steel paint, or you could burnish them with a suede brush then varnish.

MAIL should be a dark iron in most cases.

Couple of suggestions:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/anglo-saxon/flowers/gonfanon.html
https://smallsagas.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/saxon-norman-shield-patterns/
https://www.tha-engliscan-gesithas.org.uk/gegaderung/index.php?topic=1985.0
https://www.jennydean.co.uk/anglo-saxon-dye-experiments-part-1/

For mail I usually undercoat in black, then apply a gunmetal and dry brush steel/silver.

Occasionally I'll add a dark wash.

QuoteFor mail I usually undercoat in black, then apply a gunmetal and dry brush steel/silver. 

This is my normal method too. And use the brighter steel or silver for weapons and plate armour and helmets. 

for clothing 20th century muted military colours work pretty well for early medieval clothing. Maybe adding the odd brighter colour for higher status knights.  

Don't be too put off from using colours brighter than you may imagine from watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You can produce quite strong colours from natural pigments. They may of course fade and sun bleach more quickly than aniline dyes.
Natural Dyes

Many years ago when I was a reenacator we had a member who was very "Oirish".

One day he was showing off his new cirtle, dyed a deep brick red. I looked at it and said "after a few washes that will be a lovely shade of orange", and then walked away.

Apparently the reaction was a joy to behold.

"he was showing off his new cirtle" - cirtle = female attire - was this an early case of cross-dressing???

On the issue of mail (no such thing as chain-mail - it was a Victorian invention) I black undercoat and then dry brush with a steel or gun-metal colour. You can black undercoat and burnish (with a large darning needle) but you will need to varnish it fairly quickly to stop it tarnishing back to grey.

In the field a lot of mail coats would have gone rusty very quickly - so I suspect that (especially in a damper climate) you'd be better off using a dark brown as a base coat, rather than black, and use your gun-metal dry-brushing sparingly.

Mail coats were mostly transported in barrels when on campaign.
They were also 'polished' by being 'tumbled' in special barrels (a bit like butter churns) filling with fine sand and oil. This was not a practice you'd do on campaign though, as you'd have to detach the mail from its backing arming doublet (probably padded leather or multiple layers of quilted linen) which was a lengthy process. I suspect that the oil made the mail very smelly - especially in hot climates.

The Mamelukes used fine, scented talcum powder (made from ground gypsum or naturally occurring asbestos!) to polish their mail - but again they appear to have used oil as the medium to lubricate the polishing. 

More useless info - I'm not even sure where I acquired a lot of it ... a life-time of obscure reading!!!

I've read that a re-enaction found that mail kept itself rust-free as long as it was worn quite a bit.

Sorry to spoil your reverie but 'cirtle' (or kirtle) was a unisex garment originally, only becoming solely associated with female attire in the late middle ages/renaissance.

So in answer to your question re cross dressing - almost certainly not.

Quote from: FierceKitty on 24 August 2022, 10:38:35 AMI've read that a re-enaction found that mail kept itself rust-free as long as it was worn quite a bit.

Presumeably because the CHAINmail is moving about, so self polishes

Mmm, but they were talking about something which existed.

Quote from: Gwydion on 24 August 2022, 11:56:21 AMSorry to spoil your reverie but 'cirtle' (or kirtle) was a unisex garment originally, only becoming solely associated with female attire in the late middle ages/renaissance.

But it would not have bothered Last Hussar, he can be a bit of a old woman   

Quote from: Orcs on 24 August 2022, 02:14:04 PMBut it would not have bothered Last Hussar, he can be a bit of a old woman   

Should that remark come from Alexander - it's a tad Katty !

QuoteSorry to spoil your reverie but 'cirtle' (or kirtle) was a unisex garment originally, only becoming solely associated with female attire in the late middle ages/renaissance.

So in answer to your question re cross dressing - almost certainly not.

I tend to go by the fact that a 'cirtle' (or kirtle), is often erroneously referred to as the 'cote-hardie' by modern dress historians and some re-enactors, which is more correctly the male garment from the same period.
Very rarely is the woman's gown referred to as other than the kirtle in contemporary historical documents, wardrobe accounts and wills. When it is mentioned by another name, it is usually simply, gown or gowne.

The French tend to use the word 'cotte' as the underdress and 'gown' for the outer, whereas the Wardrobe accounts of Edward II (1284 – 1327) have already ceased to use kirtle in favour of the term gown.

I suspect that we may end up having to agree to differ about this ... as this is a much argued/debated issue. Wiki is notoriously poor with regard to this type of thing unfortunately - but Colins and Oxford dictionaries have clearer deffinitions 

On the issue of self-cleaning mail ... I am doubtful - my own mail rusted regularly and it probably saw more action over a 10 year reenactment period than most historic mail would have seen in a lifetime.

I suspect we will too (but I'm right )
I wasn't relying on Wikipedia, indeed Oxford, Collins and Merriam-Webster (although it is American) dictionaries all have both men and women's garments named kirtle - both archaic, gown and tunic.

But I was going more on Chaucer in the Miller's Tale where the clerk Absalom/Absolon is

'Y clad he was ful smal and properly
Al in a kirtel of fine/light watchet'

or Aurelius in the Franklin's tale who says
'For sikerly my dette shal be quyt
Towardes yow, howevere that I fare
To goon a-begged in my kirtle bare.'

Bale in his 'Actes of English Votaries' uses the word 'Kirtle' to refer to the gown of a monk.

Then there is the surcoat of the Knights Garter, referred to as the 'Kirtle' by Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald in a work ordered to be compiled by Charles II. A 1715 copy is available at the University of Oxford TCP pages: here

There is also Janet Arnold's 'The Kirtle, Or Surcoat, and Mantle of the Most Noble, Order of the Garter Worn by Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway' 1992 which builds on this use of the word for the male attire.

Also see: 'A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words: Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs from the Fourteenth Century' 2 Vols, James Orchard Halliwell Phillips 1865. 'Worn by both sexes'.

There are obviously many sources where the 'kyrtle' is used to denote the female garment, but I think it is clear from contemporary sources as well as later interpretations that it was used to denote a male garment like a tunic as well as a female gown.

But I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other.

Quote from: Big Insect on 24 August 2022, 04:19:23 PMOn the issue of self-cleaning mail ... I am doubtful - my own mail rusted regularly and it probably saw more action over a 10 year reenactment period than most historic mail would have seen in a lifetime.

The group in question were trying out the full routine - other than actual combat, decimation, and the like - of a Roman march, so were wearing the stuff daily. Maybe that's the key?

The romams used a barrel full of sand, and two sets of armour, which was kicked around to clean the armour.
Primative dry cleaning...

Out of interest, genuine question I have no idea, is there a contemporary Roman source for any of the sand/vinegar, sand/oil, sand in a barrel/sack cleaning treatment?
I had a quick google and found the idea repeated a lot but no-one suggested how they know this.
Any pointers?