Encyclopedia of Armor and Their Uses

Welcome To A Collection of Armor, Weapons, and Art

Armor and Weaponry can have a multitude of purposes and uses. It can be created to protect, built to fight, forged for respect, or created as art. In its own sense, all armor is art. In the Encyclopedia of Armor and Their Uses, a general overview of armor, weaponry and their history is compiled. Objects can range from authentic armor to paintings of warriors. Costumes to prizes. Greco Roman to Japanese. Objects include: metal armor, pen and ink drawings, oil paintings, wooden shields and linen, papier-mache costume. In this exhibition, there are ten total objects.  

Objects, images and information were gathered from The National Museum of Natural History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of American History, Cooper Hewitt, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum.     

Costume Armor and Sword in the Classical Style

Pageants in pseudoclassical dress were popular in Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. An elaborate costume of the kind displayed here may have been worn for a theatrical performance or a court festivity, such as a ball or carousel in which the theme was taken from classical mythology or history.

The embroidered tunic represents an embossed bronze cuirass of the type worn by high-ranking Roman officers. The stylized Greek helmet is richly decorated with mythological and allegorical figures. Inside the helmet is the original paper label that identifies the Parisian maker as Halle dit Mercier and advertises his ability to provide helmets, shields, masks, costumes, and scenery for any occasion (from The Met Fifth Ave website)

Purpose of My Project

In this gallery’s Digital Special Collections website, currently running on Omeka, the collections and exhibition staff tries to compile a compressive collection of armor, weaponry and related materials in a digestible manor. So many different materials, artists and uses needed a platform that could cater to them all and Omeka was the best choice.  

Resource Template Decisions

In this site, I assumed the pages into Item Set, Items, and Tags. Item Set is called The Collection which will serve as the container for the images Items. Items can be found under the page The Objects. Metadata for the objects are recorded in the Item metadata which includes 22 metadata elements from Dublin Core. These includes Titles, Identifier, Creator, Contributor, Spatial Coverage/Place, Date, Description, Subject, Medium, Extent, Format, Language, Publisher, Type, Temporal Coverage, Alternative Title, Relation, Provenance, Is Replaced By, Replaces, Rights, Rights Holder, and Account. This test-case is demonstrating how Omeka S can be flexible for different cataloguing needs with diverse metadata.

Controlled Vocabulary Decisions

Creator - Getty: The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) to keep first name, last name organization consistent and find obscure artists whom I was only provided their last name.

Spatial Coverage - Getty: The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) to consistently define the place an object is from to create connections between different pieces.

Subject - LC: Subject Headings to define what the object is or what culture it is from to connect objects within the collection.