Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - The Oriental arms & armour collection at the V&A?

Aqtai · 5th September 2005, 12:10 PM

Thanks everyone for all the replies. I am still disappointed and hope that the V&A even if they have decided not to have a separate Arms and Armour Gallery, incorporate some of the items into the Islamic galleries when they reopen in Summer 2006. The Wallace collection is a fine collection, but AFAIK they have no Ottoman or Pre-Safavid Iranian items, they also have a policy of no photography and I don't recall any books with photographs of items from their Oriental arms gallery.

The V&A did have a couple of Turco-Iranian mail-and-plate shirts as well as a partial "krug" style armour in addition to their Turkish and Iranian weapons collection. The South Asia section and the Wallace collection has no equivalent to these and that is another reason I am disappointed. The only place see items like this in future I guess will be the Royal armouries in Leeds and abroad. I will have to take great care of the photos I took in the V&A back in 1989 and 1999.

Just out of curiousity, apart from Berne, what other public collections of Oriental arms have shut down in the last decade or so?

5th September 2005, 12:10 PM	#5
Aqtai Member Join Date: May 2005 Location: Merseyside, UK Posts: 222	Thanks everyone for all the replies. I am still disappointed and hope that the V&A even if they have decided not to have a separate Arms and Armour Gallery, incorporate some of the items into the Islamic galleries when they reopen in Summer 2006. The Wallace collection is a fine collection, but AFAIK they have no Ottoman or Pre-Safavid Iranian items, they also have a policy of no photography and I don't recall any books with photographs of items from their Oriental arms gallery. The V&A did have a couple of Turco-Iranian mail-and-plate shirts as well as a partial "krug" style armour in addition to their Turkish and Iranian weapons collection. The South Asia section and the Wallace collection has no equivalent to these and that is another reason I am disappointed. The only place see items like this in future I guess will be the Royal armouries in Leeds and abroad. I will have to take great care of the photos I took in the V&A back in 1989 and 1999. Just out of curiousity, apart from Berne, what other public collections of Oriental arms have shut down in the last decade or so?