china armor

The ancient armor is to some extent equivalent to the present military uniforms, which is the image of an army and therefore must be decorated. The decoration actually works in two ways, on the one hand, it is to show the good image of the mighty and on the other hand, it is to protect the armor from erosion. Leather armor is easy to rot and iron armor is easy to rust, both need to be protected by some decorative methods. The main methods of Chinese armor decoration are as follows.   Paint, coloring Before Han and Wei either the leather armor or the iron armor, the armor pieces are painted, and repeatedly painted with multi-layer paint. Most of the Warring States' leather armors was black, according to the painted traces of terracotta warriors and horses, and the armor of the Qin Dynasty was mostly black. Many written records of the Han Dynasty armor are called Xuanjia (玄甲, black armor), and the armors of painted warrior figurines are also painted black. The color of black is a bit monotonous, so there is the idea of applying gold and silver pieces on the armor for decoration and painting at the same…

The Chinese ancient armor protecting the head was called Zhou (胄, helmet) in the pre-Qin period. In oracle bone inscriptions, the helmet is painted as a shield with a vertical tube at the top. And many of the bronzes excavated from the Yinxu tomb in Anyang are fully consistent with this phenomenon. However, there is a lack of a standard for the definition of other ancient helmets without vertical tubes in Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn Warring States. Therefore, the emergence of iron head armor as the dividing line, before that, regardless of whether they had vertical tubes or not, they were called Zhou regardless of whether the material specifically leather or bronze, after that, they were divided into two categories: Dou Mou (兜鍪, helmet) and Kui (盔, helmet). But those with vertical tubes with feathers as decoration were still called Zhou, such as the unified style of the Qing Dynasty.   Ancient helmets from the pre-Qin period Bronze Zhou (胄) of the pre-Qin period is bounded by the Shang and Zhou (周) dynasties. The surface of Zhou in the Shang Dynasty is generally cast with Taotie, round sunflowers, and other patterns, and the unearthed objects in Xingan County,…