Faulds are pieces of

plate armour Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, culminating in the iconic suit of armour entirely encasing the wearer. Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, es ...

worn below a

breastplate A breastplate or chestplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. European In medieval weaponry, the breastplate is the front portion of plate armour covering th ...

to protect the waist and hips, which began to appear in Western Europe from about 1370. They consist of overlapping horizontal

lame LAME is a software encoder that converts digital audio into the MP3 audio coding format. LAME is a free software project that was first released in 1998 and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved psychoacoustic ...

s of metal, articulated for flexibility, that form an apron-like skirt in front. When worn with a

cuirass A cuirass ( ; ; ) is a piece of armour that covers the torso, formed of one or more pieces of metal or other rigid material. The term probably originates from the original material, leather, from the Old French word and the Latin word . The us ...

, faulds are often paired with a similar defense for the rump called a

culet In gemology, a culet is a flat face on the bottom of a gemstone. During the 14th century, after the adoption of the table cut, a further facet was added to the bottom of the cut parallel to the surface of the table. The term used for these b ...

, so that the faulds and culet form a skirt that surrounds the hips in front and back; the culet is often made of fewer lames than the fauld, especially on armor for a horseman. The faulds can either be riveted to the lower edge of the breastplate or made as a separate piece that the breastplate snugly overlaps. Although faulds varied in length, most faulds for field use ended above the knees. A pair of

tassets Tassets are a piece of plate armour designed to protect the upper thighs. They take the form of separate plates hanging from the breastplate or faulds. They may be made from a single piece or segmented. The segmented style of tassets connected b ...

to protect the upper thighs was often suspended from the bottom edge of the fauld by straps and buckles. From the 16th century onward, some armors integrated the fauld and tassets almost seamlessly; the fauld lames were those which were continuous from side to side, and the tassets began where they separated at the groin. A much larger skirt that was usually confined to foot tournaments was called a tonlet. By the 17th century, many cuirasses either omitted both faulds and tassets altogether, or had large tassets suspended directly from the lower edge of the breastplate without any fauld lames in between.

Citations

References

External links

Cleveland Museum of Art
glossary of arms and armour Western plate armour {{medieval-armour-stub